Swimming in the Summertime

Our summer was swimmingly spent!  The girls waded in 18 19 swimming pools, 4 beaches (Santa Barbara, La Jolla shores, Silver Strand, Shelter island), 2 lakes (El Capitan, Alpine), and 1 river (Yosemite campground).  I made a silly goal to see how many different pools we could get into this summer, thinking it would be fun to reach a dozen, but when that goal was too easy, I worked on getting up to 20.  I was close.  I had to rub shoulders with friends with pools, but I stopped at crashing a pool party next door to up my tally (I was tempted).

With all that water time, the girls gained a lot of strength and confidence in the water.  Addisyn can swim about 20 feet out and do rudimentary side breathing ("playing telephone" they call it).  Piper can swim about 8 feet on her own and is getting more comfortable with buoyancy.  Whenever we go to a new pool, we look at it before getting in to learn where the stairs and shallow area are and where their boundaries will be (I don't let them go deep unless I am right there).  Both girls like to jump in for rings on the bottom of the pool. They even learned how to do kneeling dives.

Marissa just loves the water too, and does her happy dance when she sees the pool or bathtub.   She gets jumpy with her arms moving frantically up and down, and leaning towards the water. She has no problem getting her face wet from splashes or a quick dunk.  She will back float with me holding her.  But she will let you know with a startled shiver if the water is too chilly.

We also stayed busy with gymnastics camp, swim lessons, piano lessons, bike riding, reading at the library, and RV camping.  We were all whooped by the end of summer and had to slow down the last week so we'd be refreshed for school starting.

Addisyn underwater

 Piper underwater

Swimming at Grandma Ann's

Swimming at "Aunt Judy's" with Aunt Katherine and Jacob.  Judy gave each girl a doll that looks like them.

Swimming at Aunt Marcy's

Our beautiful day at Alpine Lake with Aunt Katherine and Jacob, and Summer and Alli:

 

Taking the boat out was another great way to enjoy water this summer.  The girls love it.

We got to take our neighbors Hermine, David, and Davey out too!

 Silly picture for Davey! 

Marissa loved the fresh air and feeling the sand go through her fingers on the beach. (Pictures of Marissa's first time in the boat and wearing her life jacket are on my last blog post.)

The girls loved spending some time with friends.  Alli gave us the idea for this "strike a pose" beach picture.  (Addisyn, Piper, Alli G, Anna, Justine)

We tried to squeeze in time for bike riding too.  Addisyn tried taking off her training wheels a couple times, but she is not ready yet.  They need to get more speed control and less of a "sightseeing" pace.  We rode on our quiet street and at campgrounds. 

Ahhhh, now THIS is the way to spend a morning: Chris checking his email on his iPhone, drinking coffee while enjoying the morning waves right from our beachfront camping spot.  

Beach camping was awesome because we could enjoy the beach whenever the mood struck, on our own leisurely time, and it only took seconds to get out there (unlike the two hour prep it took to do a beach day leaving from home).

 This is the life!

Addisyn and Piper thought it was fun to ask "is my suncreen all rubbed in?" when it clearly wasn't.

I feel like I'm straying from the water theme of this blog, but I still wanted to include these last quick tid-bits from summer for our memory banks:
On the way home from swim lessons one day Addisyn wanted to walk home, so I let her on our street while I followed her in the car. She said it was fun and she smiled the whole way, I was smiling too--it was funny!   Meanwhile, Piper was asleep in her seat...swimming is a LOT of work!

The really cool tree house at their piano teacher's house: