summer swimmin'

We did a lot of swimming this summer!  Ellie and I did two sessions of swimming lessons, and we went "swimming" in our baby pool in the backyard almost every day.

One night, for Family Home Evening, Tim even joined us!

The next three pictures are from Ellie's very first day of swimming lessons for the summer!

She was excited, but also a little unsure.  Which basically describes her entire swimming lessons experience.  Some days she was willing to try anything, and some days she tried absolutely nothing.  Some days she enjoyed it, and some days she spent the entire time telling me it was time to go home.  It was always a gamble.  (But she acted excited for it every single morning.)

Here we are on our last day of the first session:

And on the last day of our second session, Tim dropped by for his "lunch" so that he could watch her in the pool.  He took a lot of pictures that day!

I thought maybe Ellie would want to show off for Tim, but she was just as unpredictable that day as she was the rest.

Singing songs about the water made any activity a lot more enjoyable for her, though.  ("Motorboat, motorboat, go so slow...")

"Seriously, Mom, what is this?"

It makes me laugh that Ellie had like five different bathing suits and yet somehow only two made it into the pictures!  (Oh and a sidenote about that bandaid: she hit her head one day on our couch and got a pretty substantial bruise.  I put a bandaid on it to help it feel better.  Which she proceeded to wear for like the next two weeks.  She would have a panic attack any time we tried to take it off!  I was so relieved when it finally came off on its own.)

This is my cute friend, Brittney, and her kids!  (Dang you for moving to Idaho!)  My friend, Heather, and her kids were in swimming lessons with us, too, but her kids were sick for the last couple of days, so I didn't get any pictures!

We sure loved swimming this summer!  It was an amazing way to get outside every day and not get cooked by the heat.  (Which is a little funny coming from a former Arizonan.)  And believe it or not, Ellie handled swimming lessons a lot better than she did last year, so hopefully next year will be even better!