Things to Do - Swim In a Watering Hole & Cherish This Day

We spent last week in Vermont (outside Burlington), more pictures are coming (of course), but until now, here are some river pics from the first day of our vacation. It felt nice to wet our feet.

Now click on over to Cherish This Day for your weekly dose of gorgeous.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!! Have a wonderful weekend!

I don't have any random links this week, but this cracked me up last night.

Things to Do - Swim

F has never been a water-kid. When she was two, I signed us up for a waterbabies class at an indoor pool. F screamed throughout most of the class. Huge unstoppable tears. The instructor kept yelling at me "Who is the parent here? Who?" Which made me feel like an awful caregiver, incapable of understanding the most basic advice. Now, four years later, I still have no idea what the instructor was trying to convey to me. How is one supposed to deal with a water-based tantrum? Unlike a land-based tantrum, you can't ignore it, drowning being bad and all.

Anyways, since then we've stayed clear of pools for the most part. Dan's parents belong to a country club, so in summer we'll pop in for the baby pool, but that's about it. Recently, however, F's really wanted to learn how to swim. So she started lessons in the fall, which went extremely well, well enough that we decided to take on round 2 this winter. And F began to unravel. Each lesson results in tears - both from fear and from disappointment (F's upset that she is the worst in the class). So we spend our weekdays discussing how important it is to "try", how we shouldn't quit something just because we're not the best at it. And, on her own accord, F wakes up every Saturday morning ready for a new lesson. And we go, never knowing if the class will end in tears or high fives. But every time I see her jump in that pool, I couldn't be prouder.

This whole experience has made me realize that I need to try more in my own life - step out of my comfort zones, work harder to learn a skill that doesn't come naturally. Push myself.

What have you tried lately?


FRIDAY LINKS:

* well-stated.

* These surreal photos are wonderful. Love the tic-tac-toe construction scene.

* 10 Signs Your Kid Is Too Busy - I like number one the best "you never see your kid doing just nothing." Some of the other ones are just plain sad, like "your child has the constitution of an old man."

* Fireflies at night. Pretty.

*Everyone has a favorite Whitney song. This is mine, hands down.

*"If our lives were paper dolls, pins on Pinterest would be the paper clothing bent around us. In this light, a large portion of Pinterest’s content starts to look largely like the great, white, suburban dreamscape of the 1950s pathologized, now crowd-sourced to showcase today’s insecurity with the messier, dirtier, and much less wealthy lives we actually lead. It’s an extension of the pleasure machines we’ve been trained to be: we please the perceived tastes of others with images of things that have little or no relation to who we actually are or what we do — most of which images are of things that are, in themselves, about creating pleasure for others — with hopes of little more than to continue being pleasing." ?????

Places to Go - Car Camping at Cunningham Falls State Park, Part II - hiking and swimming

As I mentioned yesterday, a few weeks ago our family went car camping at Cunningham Falls State Park. During out visit, we hiked (only 0.5 miles) to the waterfall, which seemed more like a water trickle (I guess it's late in the season for rushing rapids). Rocks and boulders surround the waterfall area, which the kids loved climbing on (though I worried I'd twist my ankle).

We also went swimming in Hunting Creek Lake, which has a small beach area. The water was brownish and sort of dirty but the kids loved it. Plus the water was shallow, so they could explore further out (and a lifeguard sat on duty).

By Sunday afternoon, we were exhausted. So we packed up the minivan and headed home (the park is about 1.5 hours from Arlington), bathing suits still on.



HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND EVERYONE!!