{sqt} – water, water, everywhere!

I’m linking up with This Ain’t the Lyceum today for the weekly seven quick takes blog party 🙂 Head over to catch up with everyone else!

1. Our city has a family pool pass option for the summers, and it’s half price if purchased before Memorial Day weekend – so I decided to try it out this year. While we haven’t quite recouped the investment yet, we’re getting close: we’ve already visited our local pool eight times in the three weeks its been open! And if the kids start itching for something different, there are a few other pools around the city with their own unique features we can try with the same pass. Every time we go, the kids tell me they want to go swimming every day. It’s only because there are other things to do in life that we don’t :)Waiting in front of the entrance to the pool!

   

2. We’ve also been taking swim lessons at that same pool. The boys had a two week session early in June, and all three of them will have another starting soon; Aubade is still too young to be in a class without a parent (the minimum age for our city is 3), so I thought I’d save it for the hotter weather. It wasn’t unbearable sitting and watching in early June, but it’s just been getting warmer since then. (Although I am comfortable sitting outdoors typing this, with a warm glow coming up from the ground and a cool breeze rustling through the drying sunflower stalks, so I most definitely can’t claim that this is one of those hellishly hot summers Phoenix is known for). Anyway, it’s a chance for the boys to learn some form and technique, and Aubade has been dancing and twirling every time she remembers that she gets to have lessons this time also, so it’s a good thing all around 🙂
3. Our other go-to pool is the one at my parents’ house. It’s a very different experience than the city pool: there’s no beach entry, Aubade can wear arm floaties, the kids can run on the deck, they have pool toys to play with, and so on. So it is a good way to mix things up – and of course it is always nice to visit the grandparents and eat all their cookies and popsicles…
4. At home, we have a little kiddie pool that we can set up in a few ways. Or rather… for a few days the kids were satisfied playing in it under the shade of the patio, but now it’s been instated at the foot of the double slide, with a hose rigged up at the top so they can slide into the pool under the spray. Rondel remembered how we had set it up that way last summer, and when I suggested doing it again this year he started running around in circles because he was so excited 🙂

   

5. This week (since we had some extra time without either swim lessons or zoo camp), we also took an afternoon to drive up to Saguaro Lake and swim. I had bought a massive inflatable watermelon raft on clearance a month or so ago, so we got to try it out for the first time and the kids absolutely loved it. Well, the boys loved it. Aubade was so excited she stayed awake on the car ride there, and announced she was tired after fifteen minutes in the water; fortunately, however, inflatable rafts are apparently rather soporific and she took a nap on the raft while the boys bounced on and off of it around her, taking turns swimming back and forth from the raft to me in the deeper water. After her rest Aubade did have a great time, though! She kept bouncing and twirling through the water, telling me how beautiful it all was.
6. Next time we have a day free and need a place to go, however, I’m hoping to take the kids up to the Verde River just north of Payson. They loved our creek hikes last year, and while I had the chance to go up with just Paul for our anniversary this year, I’d also like to take them. The running water below with the wind through the trees overhead, the clean sharp edge to the air with the rich earthy counterpoint of rough bark and tree sap, the pure blue of the sky and the myriad shades of green – all of these make those little northern Arizona rivers some of my favorite places in the world. In fact, it was one of them that I envisioned when my therapist had me construct/imagine a safe place for some anti-anxiety exercises. So I’ll go up any time I can.

   

7. In the meantime, if our other springs run dry, we still have all the Valley splash pads to explore this year! And by the time another month has passed, we’ll have the monsoon rains upon us. The dry season here can sometimes feel like those barren and thirsty wastelands of life: empty, scorched, and fruitless. But when we retreat to our oases, to the pools and lakes and rivers, we find happiness – just like our spirits can find joy in the wellspring of the water of life in Jesus.