Swimming Adventures

Every year since she's been a year old, Alli has had swim lessons.  We've done them with a lady in town, Donna, who comes to our house and teaches her privately.  Given the rolled edges of the pool, I figured swim lessons in our own pool would be more adventagous for safety.  This year, I decided she need the peer pressure of a group class, so we signed her up for swim lessons at one of the Scottsdale public pools.  The class I thought she should be in was full, so I bumped her up a level.  (I signed her up Friday, lessons start Monday.)  It's hard to tell what level she should be in, but the level I bumped her up to said "needs to be comfortable in deep water".  Hmmmm.....  So Friday I gave her the challenge:  Alli, we need to get you swimming before Monday.  (Really, it was just get her back to her comfort level that she had at the end of last year.)

Friday night we went to a friend's house for dinner and swimming.  They have a pool with a diving board.  "Alli - go dive off the diving board and swim to the side."  After about 2 minutes in the water, she was ready to go off the diving board.  After another 5 minutes of swimming, we couldn't get her to stop!  And she was swimming side to side, off the board, under water, you name it.  Sweet!  She's ready!


Today (Sunday) we did some swimming just Alli and Mommy while Natalie took a nap.  We had lots of fun, but our adventures took a different turn as we swam back and forth across our pool.  We became spider hunters.  Apparently our pool has become a big draw for quite a few species of spider (the smallest one the size of a silver dollar, and the largest the size of my hand).  So we swam, and we killed spiders, and we swam, and killed more.  All together we killed 4 (1 got away).  It wasn't my idea of a nice swim, but I feel like we are slowly getting our pool back after the long winter break, so I suppose this must be part of it.  Alli, once again, swam like a champ!  She is very comfortable in the water, and had lots of fun games for us to play, the last of which was "Shoot the board out of your butt."  Yes, that was the name.  Oh so proud.  It's because of me though.  I was balancing on a kick board, and if you lean sideways, it shoots up out of the water.  She said it shot out of my butt and thought it was hilarious.  Well, after 30 minutes of playing this game, she was a pro at balancing on the kick board and "shooting it out of her butt".  Hilarious!!!  What a goof ball.