Campus Recreation Center

I dropped the ball on signing the girls up for swim lessons this year. Usually I have everything in my cart online and I just need to pull the trigger on the first day of registration. This year I was just a few days late and by then the classes we needed were only accepting wait list names. I know from experience that no one ever makes it off the wait list. Iowa City swim lessons are an absolute steal. In the end, I was able to get everyone but Brigitta into a class right when she was at Safety Village. That meant I had to drop off Brigitta, then get everyone else settled in their swim classes, rush to get in the pick up line for Brigitta and then rush back to the pool in time to collect 3 sopping wet girls from swim lessons. It was kind of a circus- thank goodness Iowa City is only a 10 minute town!

It really didn't sit well with me that Brigitta was missing out on swim lessons. She arguably needs them the most. Just a couple years ago she very nearly drowned! I promised her we would take a trip to the University of Iowa Rec Center and that helped ease the pain a bit.

Truth be told, I preferred to just soak in the giant hot tub and chill, but I put in my time with the little ones on the lazy river and the splash pad areas. Brigitta was perfectly happy to float around in the whirlpool.

Let's take a closer look at her in there, just floating along!

 Sydney, preferred doing laps on the lazy river. 

Liesel and Ireland spent a chunk of time on the rock climbing wall. Whoever thought of installing that was genius because if they fall off, it's a soft landing into the water!

 I took video but can't seem to upload any because I did it in time-lapse. In any case, they were good and tuckered out by the time we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's.

There's a fun story about that cute little girl in this picture. She was playing with the girls and one of them overheard her speaking to her mother in Spanish. They dragged her over to me where I was soaking in the hot tub and excitedly told her I speak Spanish too. Someday my daughters will learn that I actually speak very poor Spanglish but for now they hear Brent and I chattering away about whether or not the girls should have ice cream after dinner and they think it's legit Spanish. Anyway, I gave a standard greeting and the little girl just looked at me stunned. I figured it was because of my very poor Spanglish but as we were getting ready to leave, her mother approached me.

She asked if I spoke Spanish and I explained that I was a missionary for my church, as was my husband, and we use it mostly when we don't want the girls to know what we are saying. She said that her daughter was so excited that my girls were impressed by her ability to speak Spanish. This mom, paused a second and then told me that other kids have made fun of her for it in the past. She said this is the first time she's ever seen her so proud to be able to speak Spanish and she thanked me for my daughter's kindness.

As we drove home, I tried to impress upon the girls how far their little act of kindness had gone for that mother and daughter at the rec center. They were full of questions like why would anyone make her feel bad for speaking Spanish and why would she ever be ashamed of it. Maybe it's one of those things you have to be a mom to truly understand.