Swimming at Shepherd

The rain was looming down on us today, but thankfully, it dissipated by 6 and we were able to head to a swim party at Shepherd, hosted by Grandma and Grandpa's ward.  They do this every year and it is always so fun to go and run around Shepherd without huge lines or the sun for that matter!  I wasn't sure how much fun I was going to have, but Jared helped a ton with the little kids, and it gave me the freedom to rest when needed and just relax a bit more.

JD, Karianna, and Jordan of course just ran off-they all spotted some friends from school and I only saw them pop in and out every now and then to exclaim about what they were doing.  Sara and James stayed in the shallow end with Jared and I while we chatted with Jared's family off and on.  Sara didn't bother with her floatie, and she was just flipping around in the water like a pro-I really do believe if I had concentrated on swimming lessons with her for a week or two, she would be completely fine.  She LOVES doing "swimming lessons", ie, swimming with no floatie and just a grown up watching.  James was being a fruitcake :)  He walks up and down the shoreline, picks up gross leaves, splashes around, then walks out of the pool and races to the bathrooms or the slide or the eating area, laughing his head off.  He thought it was so funny to escape!  He didn't have any floatie either, so it was taking a lot of monitoring to keep him safe.

We all went and watched the older kids dive for a good half hour.  All three older kids dove and flipped off the low boards.  Karianna impressed us all by diving off the high dive multiple times!  JD of course just jumped and yelled "Cowabunga" each time.  Jordan, at 5 years old, asked if he could try the high dive, and I agreed, though I decided to bypass the lifeguard and see if we could get away with it.  Technically you are supposed to be 8 to go on the high dive, but usually at parties, they look the other way...I figured, if they want to enforce the rules, that's fine, but we will try in the meantime.  They didn't say anything, and Jordan ended up jumping off the high dive multiple times with zero fear.  It was awesome to watch!

The only downside to the whole night came right at the end.  Jordan came over to the shallow end, picked up James and proceeded to carry him into the pool, unbeknownst to Jared, who was watching James at the moment.  I was just a few feet away watching Sara splash around, and noticed Jordan, right as he stumbled and plummeted into the water, completely submerging James.  I leaped over to them real quick to yank James up, but it was enough to shock James pretty bad.  Jordan was just trying to help, and we knew that, it was just a scary sight to see James go completely underwater like that.  He really was fine after a few minutes, and even more fine when I gave him an oreo.  I will say though, it makes me glad that summer is drawing to a close and I can lock that pool gate up nice and tight and worry just a bit less!

The Bush pool party got canceled due to rain last week, and we are still hopeful that will get rescheduled in the next few weeks before summer really draws to a close!