I LOVE summer!! I just got back from taking Chance on a walk, I had to carry him part way. (Side note: I'm scared of ticks! I had never seen one before last week when I found a dog tick on Chance's ear!)
While on the walk, I could smell a pool. I love the smell of pools and I LOVE swimming! I have been swimming since I was a baby. I even went to the YMCA for preschool. My mom and dad always say how scared they were watching us jump off the diving board.
Here is a picture of my sister, me, Stephanie (my cousin), and my brother sitting on the pool deck. We got stung, at least once, every summer walking to the pool, when it was farther back in the yard. I have so many memories from the pool. One of my first is standing beside the pool and my Uncle Jerry singing, "Alana Maree, as tall as a tree." My (great) Uncle Jim hung a swing on the limb of an apple tree for Courtney and Daniel to swing in when we were out at the pool. I remember Megan, Courtney and Daniel (my cousin Missy's kids) hating swimmies. At first, Daniel hated the pool all together! He would scream bloody murder! We loved making whirl pools and then trying to go the opposite direction. Synchronized swimming was always fun. Or all of the competitions. Who could stay under the water the longest? How many (forward and backwards) summersaults in a row? Who made the littlest splash jumping into the pool. How fast could you swim from one side of the pool to the other and could you make it both ways under water? Let me tell you, I had some great lungs! Making a wave pool was always fun, even though we would get in trouble for making the water splash out of the pool. Actually, we would get in trouble for several things, but that didn't stop us. Of course, we weren't allowed to walk on the edge of the pool. We would try to see who could make it the farthest around. Hopefully, if you fell it was into the pool and not to the ground. What kid doesn't love a chicken fight, what parent does? Who's allowed to dive into a 3 foot pool? How many times did I hit my head? I don't think that many... I can't remember. ;)
When we moved to Midland, I was 4/5, a lot of kids got summer passes to the public pool. I stopped getting stung every year but I starting getting pink eye. Our feet would also get blisters and worn raw from walking (running) around the pool. The lifeguards had plenty of band aids for our feet! I was in love with a pool worker, Smudge, and various other life guards throughout the years. Our parents would go to work and we would go to the pool as soon as it opened at noon. We would stay until it closed at 6 and then head home for dinner. One would think you had to be accompanied by an adult. Nowadays you have to be 12.... What did I do for 6 hours at the pool?! Well, the same things as I stated earlier... except going the width, sometimes length, of an olympic size pool and add a few feet to the depth. We would see who could tread water the longest in the deep end, 12 ft. Diving (forward and backwards)/canon ball/flipping/etc competitions. We would form a 12 ft. tower, in the corner, and another person would swim down, go between the bottom person's legs and swim up the tunnel or stay at the bottom and the next person would do it... we'd see how many people we could stay under water for. Eventually, there was a concession stand. I loved the taffy! Anyways, there were so many other things we'd do throughout the day....
If we weren't swimming at the pool, we were swimming somewhere else. We would go
to Raccoon State Park and go swimming in the river... stream... pond... body of water... whatever it is.... Darlington Park was another place we'd go... it had a huge water slide and if you passed a swimming test you could go down it! There was also Beaver Creek State Park... you get the point... we were swimming somewhere. This is from left to right, me and Kristin, at Raccoon State Park.
When we moved back to Ashtabula, I was older and we would go swimming in Lake Erie. We'd go out on the boat and go tubing or skiing... I broke my nose tubing with a friend. This is a picture of our attempt to take a picture.... Sort of from left to right... my cousins, Justin, Daniel, Courtney, my sister, Kristin, and me. When we all fell in, Kristin tried "saving" me. I didn't have a life jacket on so she tried to hold me up as she went under water, as if I can't swim.... It didn't take her long to realize that....
I would love to jump in a pool right now! I miss living in FL and laying out by the pool almost all year round! Having a nice golden tan... Hopefully, when I'm all grown up, I'll have a pool! :)
