Swimming Swimming In The Swimming Hole

I am not sure why this day is always so difficult for me every year. I know it is coming and I should be better prepared for it, but it still always sends a little panic through my heart when I wake up in the morning and still think I should be getting ready to go to work. Nothing is layed out! No lunches are packed! Nothing is ready to go! And then it hits me that I am not going to work today and I won't be going back to work for 10 weeks! 

Then the panic really sets in because I know I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. for some reason! Ahhhhh!! I have to be at Boot camp at 5:30!! Thank the lord I set out my work out clothes and baked some egg, sausage, and spinach "muffins" last night. So there I go running out the door to do some sweating and then it's back home again.  Now it's time to wake the morning monster and get her fed and rolling before we head out the door for our first day of swim class. I will definitely be writing a full post on our swim class experience because it should be interesting. We have taken a class before, but it was just an introduction to the water and I stayed in the water with her. This class however is a little different because parents are not allowed in the class except for the first day and on Fridays to see what they have learned. This kid of mine is definitely a little fish and loves the water, but we shall see how it all goes when we get to the drop off point. I think it will be a good thing because for such a free spirited kid someone has a little bit of an attachment issue when it comes to her Mama. 

As you see even though I am not teaching there is still something to do every single day. We have our swim lessons every day Monday-Friday for the next two weeks, lots of play dates scheduled, and swim dates at Ya Ya and Papa's house so I still need to make sure I am prepared  for everything we have planned for the next day.

I do know however that when it is time for to relax we will definitely be doing it up right. I have been working on getting our backyard ready for some serious summer fun! We have our playhouse and slide, a water table, lots of dirt to roll in, our wireless speaker to jam to all of our favorite Disney tunes, and now we have an appropriate pool to stay cool in.

We started our love affair with the water in this perfect little baby pool and it has done the job for the past 3 years. 

But we have moved on to bigger and better things! Thanks to Backyard Ocean we now get to enjoy the hot and humid southern summer in this glorious piece of aquatic equipment! 

I was so excited when I was contacted by Backyard Ocean to help promote their Summer Sweepstakes because we love any company that sells products promoting family togetherness. Now that I am home with the wild child everyday we will definitely be spending the majority of our time outside and it gets hot down here so we will need a way to stay cool.

Our Deluxe Square Party Pool  arrived on our doorstep after just a few days of being contacted by Backyard Ocean. We didn't get to set up our pool right away because of too much fun at a super muddy Italian Fest, but after a fun day at church we decided to go ahead and get things set up for our first week of summer break.  First things first was to get our pool out of the box and of course I injured myself or I guess you could say I re-injured myself by dropping the box on my foot on the exact spot my sandals rubbed a huge gash the night before. Thankfully my wonderful husband helped me pull it out and he carried it out to the carport for me since our inflator can only be used when hooked up to a car. I wanted to give a good set up time frame for our pool so I set the stop watch on my phone after figuring out which inflator hose and pieces I needed to get started. Thankfully I didn't start the timer until I got all of this figured out because no one would want to know how long this actually took me. 25 minutes later I started my timer and got inflating. finally started inflating.

The Deluxe Square Party Pool has 4 sections to inflate including 3 rings making up the outside of the pool and an inflatable bench around one side of the bottom of the pool. It took me a little over 17 minutes to fill up the whole entire pool! If you have small children and you tell them you are going to blow up a pool for them to swim in it better not take a long time and if my child could patiently make it through this you know it was super easy.

Funny thing is this small bench took the longest to inflate. The 3 large rings around the side actually had your everyday run of the mill blowup ports, but they also have 3 extra ports with a acre off top and a small black plug for letting out the air that made it much easier and faster to inflate. I used one of my smaller inflator needles to fill up the bench which took a little longer. 

After I got everything blown up Brent helped me carry it back into the backyard and we grabbed a hose and started filling up. Someone loves helping me use the hose to water our vegetables and flowers so you can imagine the pure joy when I let her help fill up her new pool.

It took about 30-35 minutes to fill up the pool a little under the top of the inflatable bench which was just enough water for us today. I didn't want to fill it up too full to see how comfortable the wild child was before going all the way. She of course loved it and I will be filling it up the rest of the way tomorrow so she can show us what she learned in swim class.

Hopefully this is the face she has tomorrow swimming in the big pool! Wish us luck!