April 20th to 22nd 2001 in Harrisburg. Picture links are within text.
It was a great and memorable weekend for sure. Nora and I started it out with a long conversation in the car on the way from Olympia Friday night. Mostly we talked about how we were going to take the bus in the morning and go swimming.
There is a family community center in Harrisburg that is great! They booked out the indoor wave pool in Springfield and provided a bus to transport families back and forth.
Nora and I spend most of our time in the 12 inch heated wade pool, but ventured out into the big pool to go down the slide. We used a life vest for Nora that was given to us by the Null's, a family we have known for a while. The vest fit her perfectly and they said that we could keep it.
Once she got comfortable in the wading pool and she heard some other kids talk about the slide, she was ready to go down the slide and said "I want to slide." I said "OK" and off we went.
The slide was scary. I should have gone down it once by myself and then taken her. I put Nora on my lap and we started down with a moderate speed, then picked up some serious speed and hit the tops of the banks around almost every turn. When we hit the water, I held Nora up but quickly realized that I was pulling her down, so let go knowing that I could recover her instantly upon surfacing. Her eyes were huge and she was half concerned and half excited. She really clung to me after that. Throughout the rest of the time there I asked her if she wanted to go down the slide again and she said "No".
Betty Briggs took her into the wave pool on an inner tube. She liked that a lot. Then I took her in my tube and we cruised. She liked that a lot too.
There was another deep pool for swimming lanes. Since we had the entire center to ourselves, we chose not to swim lanes but swim for the fun of swimming. Nora wanted to try it, so I took her into the deep pool. She was never afraid, but clung to me pretty tight at first, then became brave and wanted to try to swim. She had lots of helpers.
Saturday afternoon was spent napping and visiting friends in the neighborhood. The rest of the time was just playing around the house, coloring, cleaning, and swinging on the swing in the garage. Sunday, of course, was church then we ate lunch at the Hardy's after seeing Dr. Gambee. Then it was time to go back to Olympia.
We spend a lot of our time in the car, so we try to make it as fun for eachother as possible. We sing, we clap hands, even play peek-a-boo.
Back to April 2001 visit page.