Pool days of summer.

I’ve told you what I do on my work days, now a post to say what I’ve been doing on my off days.  I have a relative (I think) who has a pool.  I put I think because I don’t know what she is to me.  She’s my grandfather’s brother’s widow.  Not sure what that makes her to me, but what I do know is she’s been telling us for years “Come over and use the pool anytime.”  Well, now with the hour change at work, I have days off during the week so we’ve gone over to her pool a few times.

This was on Tuesday.  It was freaking hot out but I never got in the pool.  To many damn kids.  I took my 2 youngest over and let my cousin and brother know we were there so they brought their kids.  Plus an additional kid showed up from my “relative’s” side of the family that I didn’t know.  So there were 9 kids.  They had a blast.

Here’s what my daughter does, she goes off the diving board, goes down the slide. swims with her cousins and has lots of fun.  Most of you weren’t here last year, but this is how I taught her to swim in the deep end at her birthday party last year.  I’ll give you a minute to read how great of a parent I am.  Ok, you back now.  That’s right, after arguing with her for awhile, I threw her ass in the deep end.  But here she is a year later, swimming with the best of them.  Then I have this.

This is what my son does, plays by himself, in the shallow end.  I have tried and tried to get him to learn to swim and he just doesn’t care if he knows or not.  Yesterday, we were at the pool again (pictures to come later in this post) and I took him out to the area between shallow and the deep end.  I held him up with my hand on his stomach and told him to swim.  “Don’t let me go, daddy”.  “I won’t, just swim” was my response.  But he wouldn’t swim, I kept telling paddle, he would do it half-assed, barely moving   “Paddle, at least try to swim” I said.  But he wouldn’t.  So I let go, thinking he would panic and swim.  Nope, he dropped like a rock.  Didn’t even try to do anything, just sank.  So I grabbed him and pulled him up.  How can you teach anyone to swim (or ride a bike in his case) who just doesn’t care to learn?  And he truly doesn’t care if he knows or not, he’s content playing by himself in his own little world.  Don’t worry, he still loves me after his drowning.

He’s my little wussy boy.  That was on Tuesday, I worked Wednesday and Thursday and had Friday off, so we went to the pool.  Most of the same kids were all there, but it wasn’t sunny nor blistering hot.  So I decided to get in this time.

I took this picture up and down so you could see the cloud cover.  It was still plenty warm, in the high 80’s but without the sun beating down on us, it was much more pleasant.  We were under a thunderstorm watch but we figured we could get an hour or so worth of swimming in before we really needed to evacuate the pool.  We had a good time in the pool, my brother and I sat in the shallow end most of the time, watching the kids, and timing our shots with our water guns to hit the kids in the face.  I know, we’re mean.  Trust me, the kids deserved it.  I even shot 2 kids in the eyes.  But before you get angry at me, they were shooting me at the time, so I just have a better shot.  Well, better than Trevor, his 5 year old cousin shot me in the eye too at the same time.  It was like a movie, we both shot each other in the eye at the same time.  Don’t worry, no eyes were hurt during the shooting.  Although I thought I lost my contact during it, but I didn’t, so all was good.

We started swimming around noon and around 1:30, we told the kids to get out and start cleaning up all the pool gear and get it put away.

Here’s my brats after they got out.  I’m thinking the slicked back hair isn’t all that attractive on Samantha.  We gathered everyone up but had 1 minor problem.  A storm was coming and my brother and I were there with 9 kids.  The problem, how to get them all home with only our 2 vehicles.  I have a Mitsubishi Galant and he has a Jeep.  I took the youngest 3 in my backseat.  One kid (technically 2) needs a booster seat.  Trevor still uses one until his birthday this year.  But I let him sit without one so his 5 year old cousin could use it.  And a couple of the kids are old enough to ride in the front (damn teenagers) so we all piled in the 2 vehicles.  Before I got in the car, I took this picture.

Yeah!  Not pretty.  Pretty cool, but not pretty.  We got in the cars and decided to take them to our aunt’s house as it was close and my brother had a key.  As soon as we get out on the road, here came the rain.  As we were driving over there, the wind picked up.  It was howling, enough that if it had been swirling, you would have thought there was a tornado.  We get to my aunt’s house, we all pile out of the cars, and run up to the house in the rain.  All to realize, that my brother didn’t have my aunt’s key with him, it was on his other keyring.  So we all ran back to the cars and headed to my mom’s house.  Along the way, we saw all kinds of branches and half of tree’s down.  We eventually made it to my mom’s house.  Got inside, took a picture of all the kids in one room and sent it to my mom.  Told her we were having a party at her house and she wasn’t invited.

That was our exciting day yesterday.  And what I’ve been doing on my days off.  Which is why on my blog reading, I’m only on June 24th.