Where have we been?!?

The better question may be where HAVEN'T we been? Life has been crazy lately so I'm sorry we've kind of fallen off of the blogger world. Sadly it was a combination of getting behind on blogging at Christmas and in January, then the death of a camera in March, and then just everyday busy life. A few weeks ago Taylor's mom was cleaning out some drawers and found a paper she'd left for a babysitter years ago when she and Jeff had gone away for the weekend. It detailed when to pick up and drop off each kid and filled an entire page in small writing. She handed it to me laughing and I just stared in horror. Pick up this one, drop off that one, literally all day from 4:45 am (maybe I'm rethinking allowing my kids to be swimmers- 4:45 is NIGHT TIME, morning absolutely should NEVER start before 5AM and even that is insane!) to after 7pm. Not looking forward to that life. Sadly, it's sort of started for us already. Here's my basic Tuesday/Thursday schedule: 8:30 drop Ethan at Kindergarten 9:30 drop Isaac at Joyschool (unless I'm teaching) 11:20 pick Ethan up/make lunches to eat in the car 12:00 pick up Isaac 12:30 drop Ethan at Spanish school/naps- Yeah! 3:30 pick up Ethan/go home/do homework 4:30 swim lessons for Ethan and Isaac I'm already feeling like I spend my days in the car and can't wait for Isaac and Miles to learn to buckle themselves in.

So where have we been? Here- at the pool! And we love it. The real reason we've added daily swim lessons to the crazyness of our lives is that our backyard is connected to and open to Taylor's parent's backyard. They are in essence just one BIG backyard and his parents have both a pool and hottub in their yard. Several times this fall and winter, we caught the kids walking across the cover- sometimes with water or ice on it and sometimes without. But each time they seemed to think they were perfectly safe and this greatly disturbed Taylor who had several friends growing up drown in pools and he started having nightmares our kids would die drowning. So while it's been a bit of an added burden to get kids to and from the pool and dressed and undressed, it's helped Taylor's peace of mind.

And Ethan's got a killer backstroke so we've got that to show for our 3 months of swim lessons too!