Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A Very Fun Weekend

This past weekend, my cousin Sharon came up from Tucson to visit us! It was soooo great to spend some time with her and her entourage (her 4 and her sister's daughter)! I've always thought of Sharon as my big sister since she lived with us for a few years when I was 8-ish. It's funny, cause we were raised on opposite ends of parenting strategies - yet we are quite similar in our own techniques. A lot of the rules and consequences her kids have are pretty darn close to the ones my own have. I think it made keeping all 8 kids somewhat under control a whole lot easier. Anyways, they came up Friday afternoon. Now, when the girls and I got home Wednesday, the pool closely resembled pea soup - in color and viscosity! It was green green, thick, and had a weird smell to it. Gross! Knowing we had company coming in just 2 days, I panicked a little (okay....a lot!) and quickly got in touch with our housing manager who directed me to have the maintenance guy (he lives 2 houses down) come take a look at it. Well, one of the holes for the vacuum - the main one - was completely clogged so there was absolutely NO suction. Which is why I couldn't vacuum any crap out and why the algae growth exploded. But the whole at the bottom of the skimmer had wonderful suction - but had been closed the whole time - so we plugged the vacuum hose into it, dumped 3 bags of shock in the water, waited for things to settle a little, then vacuumed and brushed and vacuumed and backwashed and added more shock and brushed and vacuumed and added ph minus (the ph levels were waaaaay high! talk about acid water! lol) and backwashed again. So by Friday after dinner, the water was definately clearing up. And even though it was still on the acid side......we went ahead and swam for a little while. And rinsed everyone off with the hose afterwards. lol
Saturday I wanted to let the water rest so we loaded the kids up and went to a fun FREE splash park. Soooo fun!!! All the kids - including Pie - had a blast running through all the water sprays and waiting for buckets to fill then pour over their heads. We were there for a good 2-3 hours before we needed to get back home and start dinner. I will be taking the girls back soon for sure!
After church on Sunday, and after baking a not-so-yummy pumpkin pie (I forgot the sugar!!!! Oh, no!!!) and getting a pork roast in the oven, we all jumped back into the pool. And this time, it wasn't acid water! Hahaha! Paisley is a FISH! She was all over the place jumping in off the step! She kept putting her own face under the water and came up giggling every time! So cute! We all had tons of fun and look forward to seeing our fun cousins again! Thanks for coming, Sharon!
 

1 comment:

John said...

I met Sharon recently during the fourth of July. She is quite an amazing person and you seem to be a lot like her.