We just want to go swimming, ya'll!

The swimming gods were against us yesterday.

After several very mild weeks of summer (yikes - months), summer hit in full force yesterday with upper 90 degree temps and high humidity. All RIGHT! This is more like it!

Don't get me wrong -- I've actually enjoyed the mildness of summer so far. However, we've barely taken the girls to the pool and we've only pulled out the sprinkler ONCE so far, let alone the slip-n-slide (which is in a crumbled pile in the garage . . . dry as a bone). And don't even get me started on the fact that we canceled our weekend camping trip in Traverse City because of the cold, rainy weather that was expected all weekend. Yeah. Don't get me started. We spent our Friday vacation day all day at home without plumbing. More on that later. Not our best weekend.

So, when I heard that Sunday was going to be rain-free and 90+ degrees, I knew a trip to the pool was in our future.

First, I took the girls to church and then we enjoyed a family lunch. I promised a trip to the water park after we completed a few house projects. Audrey's room was a MESS (due to the previous rainy day on Saturday. What else is a kid supposed to do but wreck her bedroom?) Vivian didn't have any real projects but I made up some stuff. She put my shoes away and a few random things.

Nevermind that my project was the largest. I was going to clean out the garage come hell or high water. Curt worked in our basement all day on Saturday and I felt like I hadn't done anything productive all weekend. After cleaning the garage and dripping with sweat, I think I deserved that trip to the pool more than anyone else.

After about an hour, we were ready to take off. Our sights were set for the Rolling Hills Water Park. Yay! Fun for everyone. We drive past our neighborhood pool and see that it's hardly full. Curt surmises that most folks are just going to stay inside and enjoy their AC today. We might have the park to ourselves.

I WISH he were correct. We made it to Rolling Hills and found a huge line of cars. It wasn't until we reached the gate that we could make out the sign that said, "The park is at capacity" or something along those lines. Capacity? This place is enormous! I didn't know that was possible!

Audrey was thrilled because her vote was to go to Vets Park Pool anyway. We turned around and decided to give that a go. It wasn't ideal but at least one person in the car was going to be happy.

We hike it over to Vets park, pay our fee to get in (MUCH cheaper than Rolling Hills would have been . . . so another bonus) and I take Viv to the potty while Curt and Audrey find a place for us to camp out. The pool is PACKED by the way. I heard some rumblings over the intercom and then a mention about "two hours." People are moaning and groaning and it wasn't until I found Curt that I was told that there was a bio-hazard in the pool and everyone needed to evacuate . . . for two hours! Some kid pooped in the pool! We didn't even get so much as our toe in! WTF??

We gathered quickly (which wasn't difficult since we weren't really settled) and headed to get our money back. They will only give us a credit for another pool trip. No cash. Ugh. We are still hell bent to go swimming now so we take it and head to another pool.

Next up is Fuller pool since we've never been there (it's also the next-nearest pool). We figured we had nothing to lose at this point. This place is also PACKED but they have a huge water slide and the pool is quite large. I made note that the Ann Arbor folks that frequent Fuller Pool are relatively more fit and attractive than the other places we've visited. Hmm. I guess it was a younger crowd. We see several medi-flight helicopters come and go (we're near the UofM hospital) so that was cool for the kids. Vivian spent a lot of time dragging a life jacket around the pool (in and out of the water) and pretending it was her doggie.

Ahhhhh . . . we finally got some much-needed pool time. Who knew it was going to be so difficult????

Perhaps next time we should give our little neighborhood pool a try, eh?