The end of summer

Today I took Zee, Em, and our neighbor friend Ryan to the Payson Pool. We waited until Daddy got home, so he could watch the two little boys, and went right after dinner.

The Payson Pool is so amazing!! It just opened last year, and is just perfect for an area with lots of young families. It has two pools--one lane-swimming/diving pool, complete with concrete risers for fans and starting blocks for meets, and one kid/fun pool. The kid/fun pool is marvelous. It is huge, shallow--no deeper than about three feet, and just one or less in most of it. There is a play structure with slides, stairs, shooting water, and a giant bucket that fills with water and dumps it out every two minutes. There are little alcoves with bubbles, places where water sprays out, and a "beach" entry, where it shallows out to one inch of water.

Then there is the lazy river and slide area. Two huge slides--easily three or more stories tall--dominate the facility. One of the slides is the steep, quick kind that I hate. The other is a long, twisty, turning type. Because none of the kids could go down by themselves, we skipped the slides this time around. But we did have a few turns around the lazy river, which is garnished by a bridge with water guns for people to shoot at you as you float under.

The kids had so much fun. The water was on the cool side, like the weather has been these last six days, and when the sun went down the wind picked up a bit. Despite the chattering teeth and goose bumps, they lasted nearly two hours--Em bailed about twenty minutes before the boys did, and spent that time huddled under all the towels, shivering. The boys, although disappointed when I informed them it was time to go, were easy to convince with the promise of hot French fries from McDonalds on the way home.

We got home at 9:30, made sure Ryan got safely to his house, and came inside to regale Daddy with our adventures. Within fifteen minutes, Em was sound asleep in the hallway, and Zee was fighting droopy eyelids.

I'm pretty sure that means the event was a success. I guess summer can be over now.