Summer Reading

I love summer for so many reasons, and one of them is for getting through some good books. I have been reading Newberry Medal books this summer, and they have been great!

Summer Sports

We have had a fun July full of swim team and basketball camp and more swim team. We love summer, and are looking forward to another month full of fun. I wish that those "Back to School" sales wouldn't keep trying to convince us that summer is almost over!

Who takes these pictures?

Do you ever upload your pictures from your camera, and there are these strange photos that you never took? It happens to me regularly. I have one particular culprit, but the others add some to the collection here and there too.

Too bad I know that eye anywhere

Were they sending me a hint that the vacuuming needs to be done?

Swimming Lessons

Before the pool was done, we decided to beat the heat by signing up for swimming lessons! Eliza, Mark, and Nathan took lessons. They are swimming like fish. Andrew and Matthew are on swim team. They have practice every day.

The Pit, I Mean the Pool

Back in May, I cracked open the winter cover on the pool to find a not so wanted discovery. The pool had drained, the liner had split, and the green slime had taken over. ugggghhhh

I may have stated in the past, that this house always "speaks" to us. We never get to choose what house projects we want to do next, our house always tells us what will be next. Apparently this summer, it would be the pool!

I called the "pool" people, and they said a liner usually lasts 12 years. Well, this is the 12th summer for our liner, and apparently a time bomb goes off that year and everything splits out. It seemed completely fine when we closed it last summer :)

So the phone calls began on new liners, installers, and such. And because Ryan and I like to punish ourselves, we finally concluded that we would buy a liner online from a pool wholesaler and install it ourselves. Call us crazy, because we ARE!!!!!!!!

There is the culprit split in the right corner.

Here is the pool after we pumped out the slime water that was still in the deep end. The liner instantly started getting brittle and pulling out of the sides over those next few weeks.

The most important job in ordering/installing a new liner is the MEASURING. So the boys and I took on the feat of collecting the many scores of measurements that were needed to get our new liner ordered. We had to be pretty creative in doing so. It doesn't look steep, but it is---Nathan is being held up by that hose while he gets that wall measurement :)

The boys peeled out all of the old caulk, and I repainted all of the aluminum coping. Here I am priming it, and I decided to take a risk and paint it brown for a change.

Sealing off all of the rusty corrosion areas on the steel walls with a rust sealer paint. Then Ryan attacked the parts that had corroded through with Bondo filler.
Looks like graffiti, but all the prep is close to done at this point--1 month in to the job.

We had to leave the old liner in until the very day of installation, so we could keep the sand base in tact. The new liner came in one compact cardboard box, but the old liner filled three dumpsters after we cut it out in chunks. We couldn't drag it out, so that we wouldn't ruin the sculpted bottom. Never mind the big pregnant lady there in the middle :)

Liner almost out, and very hot down in the sand pit.

Inspecting the sand, and waiting for our "help" to arrive for liner installation.

We opted to cover the steel walls with a foam liner, helps keep corrosion from ruining the liner, and supposed to help with insulating too.

The liner weighs 220 pounds. All hands on deck were busy pulling it across the deck and holding the corners into place----so no pictures of that part. But once we got the corners connected, connected the sides, and it looked like this. We began smoothing out the wrinkles and attaching a shop vac to start sucking out the air behind it.

Then the water filling begins----hours and hours of water filling. We will let you know next month how much 25,000 gallons of water adds to your water bill!

The kids couldn't wait to get swimming, so they jumped in when the first two feet filled up. You can see that there are two shop vacs sucking air the entire time that we filled it up. The wrinkles were nicely disappearing, and we adjusted them as it went.
Day two of filling, about half way now. Taking another swim to test out the water.
And finally, the pool was put to use for a 4th of July party, the water just filling in in time!
Moral of the story, if your time is free to you---it can be a HUGE money savings to install your own pool liner. We saved $3000 doing it ourselves, and it really was totally do-able. And we still have quite a few swimming weeks to go this summer!

Birthday Week

It was a week of celebrating here for this little girl, I mean BIG girl! With Grandma and Grandpa here, party with uncles and aunts, party with friends, and fireworks! What more can you ask for?

New outfit from Grandma and Grandpa

Dress up clothes and jewelry from cousins and Grandma Kelly

And I think that she grew a foot taller when she got to go on a special date with Uncle Shayne and Aunt Kortneigh for her birthday-----to a movie by herself!

With popcorn bigger than she is!

Topped off by a friends' birthday party of cute little four year old princesses.

So much fun dressing up, making crowns and jewelry, playing musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, treasure hunt, and eating yummy food!

What a day! What a week!

And, YES, she does keep wearing that dress day after day after day since her birthday!