Mommy Doesn't Swim

This Fourth of July post is obviously a tad late, but quite honestly, I have been too lazy and unmotivated to write it until today. :-)

We did absolutely nothing for the Fourth of July this year. Our town doesn't put on a fireworks display; our big celebration is the annual Dairy Princess Festival weekend. And we were not invited to any barbecues this year (as we were last year), and Daddio had to work, so our holiday was pretty much uneventful. Well, that isn't entirely true. We actually took the boys to the beach to go swimming. Or rather, Daddio suggested that we take the boys to the beach to go swimming and I went along for the ride.

I think he was trying to be a monster in this photo.

Daddio and the boys played in the sand and went swimming while I sat there and looked pretty in my new bathing suit and yellow cover-up. Daddio even complimented me by telling me that I looked cute nice beautiful smokin' hot drop-dead gorgeous in my beach attire. (His exact words may have really been "You look good", but I like my version of the compliment much better). And I never actually took off my cover-up because there were too many people at the beach (including a family that I know) and I was too self-conscious, regardless of Daddio's assurances that I had nothing to worry about, that I looked fine in my suit. That wasn't my concern. I just don't like people looking at me for any reason.

But seriously. I don't swim. At least not in a river. Give me a nice clean pool with a floaty in it and you may be able to get me to take a dip, but a river with dirty, murky water? And with fish in it? Not happening. (We'll ignore the fact that I never even really learned how to swim, let alone how to hold my breath under water. Yes, I still plug my nose. We'll just pretend that the water itself was the reason that I didn't want to go in).

Would you swim in this water? I think not.

To my credit though, I did walk in the water up to my shins, and I did kneel down in the sand to play in it with Ben for a little while, but there definitely was no half-naked-and-feeling-exposed-in-a-bikini-in-water-over-my-knees action going on.

Hair courtesy of SPF-30

I also had a proud moment when I was required to pull out my "Mommy Voice" (or was it my "Teacher Voice"?) to use on a group of older boys. Typically, I would not yell at other people's kids, but in this case, it was necessary. There were three boys, about middle school age, who were getting pretty rowdy in the water, pushing each other and splashing around. They were this close to little Ben, and nearly knocked him over. Apparently this kind of behavior was okay with their parents, and with the lifeguard, because no one said anything to them until I yelled at them (or rather, spoke firmly) to stop acting that way around the smaller children. Thankfully they stopped without any arguments, but how annoying  to have to monitor their behavior, a job their parents should be doing.

All in all, a decent time was had by all. And as an extra bonus for me, the boys were overly exhausted come nighttime, which made it that much easier for me to get them into bed.

Did anyone actually catch a fireworks show on Fourth of July?