We Got Weather.

This is a common phrase in Ohio.  It baffled me a little at first.  Weather?  Everyplace has weather.  In fact you don't have it.  It just is!  But when they say it here, it never means anything good.  To say, "There's going to be weather this afternoon."  means there is going to be a tornado/blizzard/wind storm/pouring rain/flooding.  And all of those will cause our power to go out.  I didn't know it was possible to lose power as often as we lose power.  We live in well established suburbs of a well established city.  But the wind blows and we lose power.  Maybe that's why so many Amish people settled here.  We're all pretty good without electricity around here...

Anyway.  I just found these pictures from a summer afternoon this past August at our town's swim club.  We love it there.   Tonight there is weather in the forecast.  (This time weather means snow.)  These pictures make me happy to look upon to remember warmth and summer and a lazy afternoon with my kids in which I didn't have to pick up after them.

Benjamin learning to dive off the board.  He is finally doing much better off the block, but the diving board seems much further away from the water.

This one is probably going to hurt.

And this one.

But the splash isn't too bad.

Lilyanna doesn't mind Benjamin learning to dive.  It means she gets to sit longer in the grass and eat bugs.  Mmm...bugs.

All done with the bugs.  The thumb isn't so crunchy.

Early Summer

I love summer. In our first week we have:

-spent every day at the outdoor pool

-Benjamin decided to join the swim team which practices every day there and discovered that he is built for such a sport

-The boys all got their first prize from the library summer reading program and just picked up the summer reading program for Half Price Books, also.

-I slept in and missed two early morning workouts, which is particularly problematic since I'm feeling miraculously not so terribly sick. The whole being able to eat again and not working out thing is not going to fly.

-have had fabulous day long play dates with good friends twice this week

-Caleb and Nathaniel both agreed to and received summer haircuts!!

-picked lettuce, black raspberries, and stawberries from the garden

-and I've nearly finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It makes me happy inside.

Holey Lessons Learned

An important note to self:

When you have an upcoming vacation that will heavily revolve around water, and you also have a bathing suit which is only going to make it to the end of this summer because it's so threadbare AND you hold your second bathing suit in your hand while packing your suitcase, DO NOT leave the second bathing suit at home.

If you do, you may find yourself in the pool at a family reunion swim party and suddenly aware of a little extra water in the backside of your bathing suit. When you reach to the back of your bathing suit, you may also discover that several holes have appeared smack dab in the middle of your bathing suit's backside, which will make it so you will have to back (very carefully) out of the pool and into your cover up as quickly as possible, mostly because you sense that your husband's Grandpa would not find your mooning everyone at the family reunion to be in the best of taste.

THEN, because the next day's family reunion activity is going to a water park, you may find yourself in the unenviable position of rushing from the swim party to Super Target at 9:50 pm while they are shouting over the loudspeaker "the store is closing in ten minutes. please take all purchases to the register." Which will cause you to growl as you realize that apparently there are no bathing suits in the adult section made for anyone smaller than a size 24, which will make it so you have to go to the juniors section and look for something that looks more like a bathing suit and less like brightly colored dental floss. Which may cause you to grab 7 different bathing suits off the racks and run up to the register (all while still in your dripping wet cover up which is still covering up the holey suit) with $150 worth of bathing suits that are incredibly unlikely to fit you.

THEN, you will go back to your sister in law's apartment to try on all of the bathing suits which are likely to be rejected only to realize that your sister in law doesn't own a full length mirror. Which means that once you try on one of the hideous bathing suits, you will have to stand balanced on a chair that you dragged into the bathroom from the kitchen and try to determine how the bathing suit looks while you can only see 1/3 of your body at a time in it.

Ultimately, you find something that you think looks okay, but you're not really sure because you could only see 1/3 of your body at a time in it, but it will be fine for the rest of vacation.

BUT (haha) as you trudge back to Super Target the day after the water park to return over a hundred dollars worth of bathing suits, you will probably reflect on the fact that had you just packed that second bathing suit, the family reunion would have been a little less exciting.

Water Babies

I love water. Swimming makes me all sorts of happy. Happily my children have inherited that tendency. Yesterday at the pool there were all these wonderful moments that I have to write down so I don't forget them.

1) Benjamin doesn't look for me to watch him every single time he does something anymore. It made me a little sad as I tried to get his attention to tell him what a great job he was doing with his swimming. But at 8 years old, he's starting to figure out that he's his own person independent of me.

2) Nathaniel after years of temper tantrums PUT HIS WHOLE FACE IN THE WATER ALL BY HIMSELF!!!!! He loved swimming before, just not putting his face in. But yesterday he had a pair of goggles and it was a whole new world for him. He was holding his breath for the first time ever and having a great time spying on people's feet.

3) Caleb was very excited to show me how he could sit on the bottom of the pool. He is by far my most adventurous child in the water. No swimming lessons and barely 4 and jumping in the pool to sit on the floor and then swim up is VERY impressive to me.

No pics from yesterday, but here are some from the beach a couple weeks ago that made me laugh.

Happy as a clam.


"Be one with the sand."

For a kid who hated everything about the beach for the first 4 years of life, he's come along nicely. ;)
My construction crew standing in what they referred to as "Lake Smith". There was a whole lot o' Smith, but not so much lake.