Splash!

In my continuing effort to keep the kids busy while they're on winter break here, we took a trip to the town of Amneville http://www.amneville.com/index.aspx about 40 minutes from here for an afternoon of swimming (indoor of course). As part of the education program, the children get swimming lessons starting in preschool and continuing through grade school. My girls will be starting their first swimming lessons in April, my son just finished 16 weeks of swimming lessons in January. I think it's great that it's incorporated into the physical ed. program. But it does seem to vary depending on the town you live in. Friends of ours who live in the town right next door, literally 5 minutes away, have kids the same age and they do not have swimming lessons offered. My children really enjoy playing in the water but I would not call them natural swimmers. They're very hesitant about putting their face in the water for example, so it's been a slow process, especially for my son who has been getting lessons for a few years now. There's been definite if not slow progress. If they learn to swim and feel comfortable in the water I'll be satisfied.
When the kids go with school they get on a bus and go to a pool about 30 minutes from here, for the moment our town doesn't have a pool, actually they did but it was too old and was closed for years. But fortunately for us a brand new one is being built here in town and should be open by the end of the year. I can't wait, it'll be great to have one so close. We went to Amneville because it's nicer with a choice of 3 pools: there is an Olympic sized one, medium size and then a baby pool. There are also two slides that Kevin loves to go on.
It was a great afternoon, we took a friend of Kevin's with so basically 2 sets of twins! Papa stayed with the boys, me with the girls. As I chased the girls around in the pool pretending to be a shark, I wonder if anyone else knew what I was doing when I was saying "dun dun, dun dun..."
(Think "Jaws" music) I'm not sure they know that movie over here. The girls loved it.
It also provided an opportunity to prepare them for their "piscine"* days. They are really looking forward to it.
The best part of an afternoon like this is that they sleep like logs! In bed by 8-8:15pm and sleeping until 7:30am!! That's unheard of in our house. Usually they're up by 6:30am at the latest. So it really is feeling like a vacation even for maman and papa!

*pool