Pool time 2016!

It's summer here again!  As in past years, it seems to be very cool and wet into late May.  So much so, that thinking about pool parties and outdoor water parties in early June is hard to believe it will feel warm enough to do so.  Yet, June arrives and summer comes with it!

So, we made our first trip to the Bay pool this past Sunday.  This is by far Evan's favorite pool...and mine too.  It has something for everyone!

Emma is now big enough that she enjoyed floating around in semi-deep water with her floaties on, and also she loved going down the big slides with John.  She would squeal after each time she went down the "green" slide.

Emma squealed with delight after each trip down this slide with Daddy!

Evan loved it too, and since the pool wasn't too busy there were hardly any lines to wait for the slides.  So the kids got to go over and over again.  I think that was because it was kind of overcast in the morning.  In fact, Evan and I even talked about if it wasn't a good day to go anymore (he said "uh oh, we can't go because it's not sunny!").  But luckily the skies cleared up and it got plenty warm and sunny.  And the thunderstorms that were forecast to start early afternoon didn't come through on time, so we had a good day of swimming!

Emma is starting to put her face in the water more.  She doesn't necessarily like doing it, but will on occasion and she can surely hold her breath (which she did every time they came to the end of the slide).  She does the slide in the baby pool all by herself again (she was starting to last year as well). Evan even got to do the fast "5" straight slides in the big pool by himself this time.  While he wasn't tall enough yet, the lifeguard let him try once by himself and watched him swim to the edge of the pool and then said as long as John was watching him closely, he could go down by himself again!  Yay for my little swimmer!

One of the times that John and Evan went down the tube slide, they almost flipped!  While I was waiting to take their picture, I noticed a lot of the double tubes flipping over upon impact with the water.  Instead, for John and Evan, John just got a bit of a dunk in the back, but they were banked pretty steep when they hit the water so it's amazing they didn't flip! The time sequence of photos below documents this and gave me a bit of a laugh watching it unfold one photo at a time:

Looking good, and then uh oh, what a bank angle!

John's been dunked!

And John has rebounded...while Evan's still holding on strong!

If I haven't mentioned it on the blog yet, Evan passed Seals this past winter, but is not old enough to start the next level of swimming lessons, so we put him in Seals one more time before our trip to Australia, where he practiced his swimming nearly every day in Nanna's pool!  And this fall we'll put him in swimming lessons again in that new level to learn proper strokes and breathing techniques.  We'll start Emma in Turtles then as well!