Night Swims

Yesterday we headed to the dollar store, Breanna was needing something so we picked up some McD's french fries and went shopping. She picked out some coloring books, but suddenly I remembered something I read online. So I picked up a CASE of the glowsticks. It was maybe $10 altogether.

We came home, grilled out, sat out and played cards (FLUXX and WaterWorks) for a while, and after everyone was ready to transition, I suggested maybe it would feel good to swim (honestly, 100 degrees today and too hot to swim in the afternoon! 80 degrees at ten pm last night, and it felt wonderful!) It's just odd enough, because usually I'm hesitant to get them swimming so late, cranky neighbors, hard to see, I'm exhausted....So while they jumped in, I ran inside, got my swimsuit and opened up all those glow sticks. In the pool, I cracked them all open and started quietly distributing them around the pool. The girls were THRILLED. We had so much fun swimming around diving for sticks. The girls experimented with placing them in different areas and distribution, and we all agreed that we need to have a party and invite everyone over to swim late at night.

It was so beautiful to see their happiness and contentment shining in the pool late at night. The soft glow through the water was enough to light their faces, and they were happy to be out and playing games with dad and mom. We floated in the noodle chairs and watched lightning bugs. We counted stars and adopted some as our own. We all gathered around Avari in her baby floatie and laughed as she splashed her way around to try and get the floating glow sticks. Rachel learned to dive under water so she could catch as many as Emily was getting.

I took the big plunge with unschooling, and I'm still finding little things I didn't realize I was ruining for everyone. We stayed up swimming until midnight. The little ones got out on their own and climbed into bed as they got tired. I was surprised to come in and see them down. Josh had stayed inside to play video games, and he helped settle Dan into bed with kisses and storytime. :-) He's so helpful...

Anyway, I might blog it later, I'm still tired and maybe not verbalizing well how cool it was. Even if you have a wading pool, it would be cool. We were also talking about how it would be fun to use the necklace length ones and tape them onto our homemade water park....

Melissa
Mom to Josh (11), Breanna (8), Emily (7), Rachel (6), Sam (4), Dan (2), and Avari Rose

share our lives at startlinglives.blogspot.com the older yahoo 360 blog was gone; I googled a newer one, 3/09 —Sandra


Other typical unschooling days