Pool day

Today was Rachel's last full day at home, and it was finally sunny again (her time here has been so, so rainy), so we made her come swimming with us. We won't have time to go swimming (for fun) tomorrow between swim practice and picking Miriam up from YW camp and taking Rachel to the airport and going to our swim meet...so this was also Rachel's last visit to our pool.

Phoebe happily showed Rachel all her swimming skills and even agreed to go into the deep(er) end to work on her diving (though she is still refusing to enter the deep end, I think she'll be there in no time).

Zoë had a bit of a tiff with Benjamin in the deep end and decided that she was ready to go home, so she started walking around the pool wrapped up in her towel with her backpack on, urging everyone to please get out so we could go home (to be fair she'd been at the pool since 8:00 in the morning). 

Then a horsefly flew by and that girl took off her towel and backpack so fast and bolted across the deck and into the pool—with her flip flops still on her feet. There was no way she was going to risk getting bitten!

Once she was back in she was good to play for a little bit longer. We played a fun game of keep away. 

And then just as we were getting ready to go for real, Zoë's triplet friends showed up to play so...we stayed for a few more minutes so she could play with them. Benjamin had a friend that had stayed after swim practice as well, so he was also entertained. But in the end the children's empty stomachs were what called them home (empty in spite of eating an entire box of graham crackers, an entire bag of mini-bagels, a handful of string cheese, and a very large Tupperware container of apple slices while we were at the pool).

It's wild to think that this year's last-pool-picture will truly be the last pool picture (at this pool). Not that this is our last pool picture (we will be back at the pool tomorrow), but it is Rachel's last pool picture. 

End of a era, truly.