Just keep swimming...

One of the down sides to staying where we were on the island is that the ocean was much more rough than the past few years. We were really quite a bit further out into the ocean! The only times that were really safe to take the kids out to the beach were a few hours after the high tide had started to turn. As a result, we didn't spend as much time on the beach as other years. Fortunately, the house we were in had a swimming pool, and I think the kids actually preferred it to the ocean!

I can remember when I was growing up, once I'd conquered my fear of water, spending hours at our neighbor's house making up jumps into their pool. Ryan and Samantha had so much fun doing the same thing this year! Katy continued to work on swimming without her vest and is really doing well with it. Olivia is still doing great with her vest, and even put her face in the water a few times--so she's already doing better than I did at age 5!