Swimming When I Should Be Working

Scheduling issues meant I had to leave the office at 2:00 and pick the kids up from school. I had to keep them until Eric got home from work (which effectively meant until after dinner). (Oh! The kids...all three of them!...are in school right now because they're in one of our three area year-round schools. I'm gathering my thoughts and observations on this new situation for us and am going to write about it soon.)

So, after picking the kids up, we all zipped over to Kroger and got some supplies for the kind of dinner you can make when you're getting home sooner than 5:30. Getting home by 3:00, I realized we had about 90 minutes to kill, though, before dinner needed to be started...so I asked the kids if they wanted to go to the pool. In case you don't know, we're staying with my in-laws right now..and they live directly across from one of the local private pools, meaning that having 90 minutes to kill meant 5 minutes to get dressed, one minute to walk to the pool, and still plenty of time to make it worth it.

The pool was almost deserted because of a swim meet tonight (at another pool). All the swim team kids are banned from the pool after a certain hour on meet days so they're sort of forced to rest (theoretically) before the competition. Of course, all the swim team kids being gone means all of the parents being gone, all of their siblings being gone, and so on. Counting us four, there were probably 10 people in the pool.

Stony (who's been old enough this year for the first time to go to the pool on his own) found one of his friends and started doing the high-dive, low-dive rotation with the funny "dives" like The Egg Roll, Cowboy, and, of course, the classic Jack Knife. The girls and I hung around in the shallow end of the pool, where they could stand (or tippy-toe for Edie) on the bottom and I could better ensure their continued survival. They took turns climbing the steps, jumping into the water to each other, and playing "watch me, Mommy!"

Edie (who recently turned 4) would cock her head to the side, squint one eye, and sort of bend down and point toward me...like she was planning on hitting a home run in my direction or something. It was hilarious and the sun made her blue eyes glow. With those eyes and the funny pose (and, of course, that face), she looked just like her dad. Somehow Bella's eyes seemed greener these days...and more so in the sun. Every day in the summer her freckles come out more and more. Maybe its the tan on her face that highlights the green. Nonetheless, Bella was in her Happy Serenity mode (her happiness is more serene than energetic) and she looked so sweet doing her underwater flips and smiling at me when she saw that I was watching.

After a while, the girls and I headed back up the house so I could make dinner and they could rest (with Stony planning on staying behind for about another hour). For several minutes before we left we watched Stony do those specialty dives. Edie proclaimed that he was "so neat!"

Dinner came out perfectly...and it was what I'd consider a summer feast! We had blackened salmon, Parmesan & Romano rice, sauteed spinach, and steamed green beans. (Jealous much?)

After dinner the kids settled into the small amount of homework they had. Well, two of them settled into homework and one four-year-old lost it (which four-year-olds will do when they're tired) and was sent to bed. I didn't bother fixing my post-swimming-air-dried hair, threw on an old t-shirt and comfy jeans, and went back to my office for a couple of hours of work...the kind that's always leisurely when the office is empty. After some more work and Gmail chatting it up with my newly-Michigan-residing friend, I headed back home. Since then, I've done...nothing (except study Scrabble words, of course).

Today was a good day.