Swimming lessons

The monkeys took swimming lessons this summer and the entire experience was FANTASTIC! I was very adamant that all three kids become more "water safe and water friendly" because I intended to spend as much time as possible at our neighborhood pool (having this pool was one of the main reasons we bought this house). Emilee took one session, got some pointers to refine her strokes, and then was promptly told "outta this pool...you are too good for us, you need to be on a swim team!" Wow, girlie, who knew?! Trevor took two sessions and made great progress. At the beginning of summer he was "safe" around a pool, meaning I knew he could fall in and return to the side...and he could sorta do the front crawl. But by the end of the summer his strokes were improved and he was a MUCH stronger swimmer! And Carter started the summer refusing to get his face wet...and by the end of his second session could actually swim from one end of the pool to the other unassisted!! AMAZING progress!

Here are a few pictures...

Bunny of course had to join us AND specifically watch Carter's lesson...

Em and Trev having a "tread water with your hands out of the water contest." Trev is forgetting the hands up part lol...

Working on dives off the side...


I love this picture of Em pushing off the side to start a lap of some stroke...the water just looks super cool!

Another cool pic of Trev mid-stroke


And some video...

Trevor doing freestyle...

Em doing butterfly (her shoulder strength is amazing!)

One of the first days of lessons. The teacher had gotten Carter to get his face wet and started introducing freestyle arms and kicking.

They also got right to introducing these little ones to dive from the side {{ughhh I can't get this video to load correctly for some reason, check back later, I'll try to fix it}}

Carter's first jump off the diving board

Eventually he got up the courage to jump alone, and and Trevor took a jump!

A dive later on in the lessons

And Carter's shining moment...jumping off the board and swimming the whole length of the pool alone! He came so far from not wanting to get his face wet 4 weeks before! And this was our goal, so that we could all safely enjoy our neighborhood pool.