T-Ball/Softball, Bathroom and Pool Time!

The girls started softball and t-ball last week and are loving it so far. Charlotte's age group is 9-11 years old and so she's one of the smallest on the team but it doesn't bother her. She's just happy to be playing. I do like that they are doing this during the spring vs the summer, however I don't like that their practices and games are spread out across the town. They didn't have certain days of the week we could sign up for like they did in Nampa. I didn't find out what their schedule was going to be until the weekend before practice started. Both are on Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes over lap. Charlotte's aren't at the same time every day. Their games will be on the same days as well and both at the same time. I'm not happy about this but I suppose it's the best they could do since it's baseball season for middle and high schoolers as well. The first couple of practices we had pretty cold weather. Alice only had one practice last week but she came with me to watch Charlotte practice. On Mondays, Alice and I go to her practice from 6-7pm. Curtis takes Charlotte to her practice at 7pm. Then Alice and I come over to Charlotte's practice so that Curtis can go home to work on projects like the bathroom. Charlotte's practice ends at 8pm. But on Wednesdays Charlotte's starts at 5:30, so I can drop her off and then go to Alice's practice. They both end at 7pm though and with Curtis being in Young Mens and taking both our boys to mutual, it makes it a little difficult but we'll try to make it work. I think we'll have to switch off on watching games since they are at the same times and days.

Wearing their old hats from Nampa's t-ball.

I decided to be an assistant coach but that was before I knew the schedule. I told the head coach that I would help when I could. Thankfully, several others have stepped up to be assistants as well.

Curtis has been busy and working hard on getting the bathroom downstairs finished, or at least finished enough to be able to use the shower. He got the tiles finished and grouted but we have to wait a week for it to set up before getting it wet.

Ready for grout.

Attaching the shower head.

Working on the grout now.

Finished and cleaned up.

Yay! It looks pretty good! The picture is stretched so that I could see more from close up, so the shelves don't look even and that's why. 

He used some extra tile for the back splash at the sink. 

And we at least got one mirror hung up. The other one will move down when we move out of our room upstairs.

Curtis had called a pool company to come get our pool up and running and cleaned this year. They came out last Friday and whoa, it was black! The pool hasn't been opened in at least two years according to our neighbor. It took the pool guys 3 days to get it done because the water level was too low and we had to refill it. Then when they vacuumed and washed some of it out they could only go until the water went below the skimmer. Then we had to refill again with the hose. But the transformation is amazing!

Taking the cover off. 

Starting to fill it with more water since it was too low to be able to vacuum on the first day. They did put chemicals in though. The water was actually pretty clear. It was the muck (algae, dirt, etc.) stuck on the bottom that made it look so dark.

It looked pretty nasty.

But there were some spots where we could see blue underneath the muck.

A couple of ducks have tried to move in now that it's open and looked like a pond. I let them stay long enough to get a picture but then decided we better not let them get used to it. Sorry, no ducks in our pool!

The pool guy had to carefully vacuum the muck so as not to stir it around and mix it in the water, so it was a bit slow.

This is where he ended on Monday.

Finishing up yesterday (Tuesday).

We are fortunate that the previous owners left us a robotic pool cleaner. It even climbs and cleans the walls! So we put it to work on cleaning the remaining dirt in the pool that we couldn't get with the vacuum.

It looks so much better now!

The pool guy, Dan, finished by putting some more chemicals including clarifier in to help clear it up. The remaining dirt will get sucked up by the pool filter and by the robot. 

The pool was safe to swim in even though there was still some dirt at the bottom. The kids were so excited and didn't want to wait. Jack took the plunge off the diving board. The water was really cold!

It was too cold for Garrett's liking. I'm amazed that Alice still got in. I'm not surprised that Charlotte was the first to get wet.

The previous owners also left us some water toys.

Charlotte tried out her new snorkeling gear. (She got it for her birthday but that will be a different post.)

Jack was catching "fish". He's sitting on an inflatable slide.

Even Curtis got in.

This is how it looked this morning. It's looking better all the time!

Most everyone had fun swimming in the pool. I was the only one who didn't even get a suit on because I knew it was too cold for me. Garrett got his feet wet but everyone else at least got their body in. We are hoping that we can get the pool water heater fixed so that we're not freezing all the time. It was a lot of work getting the pool ready and it will still be a lot of work to maintain it but I think it will be worth it. The kids are so happy (except for Garrett, who really wants the heater fixed pronto). Curtis had already told the pool guy that we wanted someone to come look at the heater, so we'll see when that happens.