An afternoon with the kids

Today we spent an afternoon with the kids. We started off playing in the park. Here's Amida (today was her eighth birthday) and my girl Christella, who was two in May.

Antonio isn't too big for some fun on the....well, whatever this thing is....

Next we made our way over to the pool and spent a couple of hours trying to teach the kids to be better swimmers. This quickly dissolved into simply climbing on Ryan.

Trying to teach Amida how to float

Antonio and little brother Brice

Amdani gets a turn with Ryan's goggles

Amida likes to wait til Ryan's back is turned and then jump off the side of the pool onto his back. The poor guy is just a giant animate pool toy.

The big snack hit of the day was the multigrain snickerdoodles which were the subject of a sort of feeding frenzy. The kids also ate eight apples and an entire bag of baby carrots. The cucumbers were regarded with suspicion.

We brought Christella along to give her Mom a chance to do the laundry and take a nap. Christella got a HUGE kick out of the water and enjoyed kicking and squealing until she fell asleep on my shoulder. We rigged up a little bed for her out of towels and she took a long nap. Swim diapers are an amazing thing. How do they work? I think it's magic.

After a while the kids figured out we had a camera. Here's some of their photographic work.

We all went home happy and tired. Except for Christella, who slept through most of the afternoon. She was just hungry.