Pool!

After years of refusing to even think about it, I finally relented and allowed my family to get a pool.  We started looking into the process last summer, but by the time we got serious it was late July and the pool wouldn't be done until the fall so we held off.  Finally, in January we decide to get started.  Here is our yard before the process.  We did have to move the electrical line and so you can see the dirt path of the line in the back. This is straight out of our back door.

This is to the right of our back door.  The dirt pad is where the trampoline was for the past 7 years.

The view to the left of the back door.  The trampoline is only temporarily going to be there.

Ellie wanted to point out how big and open the yard is.

The excavation.  Our yard is sloped down from the porch so the back end had to be raised to make the pool level.

After the excavation.

The rebar put in in preparation for the gunite.  Michael and Nate are showing the depth.

The first day of gunite. This just kept the walls from falling in over the weekend.

Gunite day.

The hot tub.

A view of the bench in the deep end and the hot tub being done.

The stairs.

The finished gunite.

We wanted a fun place for the kids to jump from.  We had this waterfall created.

Nate liked climbing on it even before the pool was done.

After the tile around the waterline of the pool was done and the tile around the hot tub, as well as the coping around the pool.

I really like the split stone face that is around the hot tub.

The next step was the deck.  Having  a nice wide deck was a big priority for us.

Next was the plaster.  We picked a dark gray/blue color so that we could have dark water.  It is very pretty.  It is more difficult to see people in the water though.

Filling up day.

We have a nice wide step that can be used as a bench in the pool  You can sit in there and cool off but not be all the way in the pool.

The first day in the pool!

The last step was the landscaping.  Since there was a large easement at the back of our yard, we had to put the pool 14 feet from the fence.  That left a large area that was just ugly.  We thought that the pool would look much nicer if we landscaped the whole area.  You can see the water is a dark aqua color.  In the back to the left, we have a sitting area with a round table and 4 chairs.

We didn't want to mow inside the fenced area (fence not shown) so we xeroscaped the back yard.  We had some very pretty flowers put in.

View from the deep end toward the shallow end.

My favorite view, from the sitting area toward the hot tub.

This is the pit that will eventually have an in ground trampoline in it.  That is a huge project that we will continue working on soon.

Adam's 8th grade

Adam had a great 8th grade year.  He had a couple of interesting classes that he got to take at the school.  The first was TV broadcasting.  The kids learned how to use cameras and put together a news cast, and then halfway through the year, they got to do the announcements.  Adam preferred to be working behind the camera, but he did get to be in front of the camera doing announcements a few times.  There were only 8 kids in the class, one of which was Ben, who was also in our ward, so he got a chance to become good friends with Ben.  He also took beginning theatre, which was taught by the same teacher.  He didn't like that as well, but it was a fun elective.

In Boy Scouts, he made it to Life Rank.  He's starting to get old enough to not enjoy Scouts anymore, but he is very close to getting his eagle, so hopefully he will finish that soon.

 He officially started acting like a teenager this year.  We often would find him around the house in random places looking like this.

In his advanced science class, he had the chance to participate in a district wide robotics competition or the science fair, and he opted for robotics.  He had a great robot, but it broke right before competition and so they didn't do so well.

 He grew a few inches too!

 All year long, he had private tennis lessons.  When tennis season came, we forced him to try out.  Of course he made the team.  I'm not sure that he liked it more when he was done, but he had some good experiences.

 At the end of the year, his school did a fundraiser color run.  Michael said he wanted to run with me, so I signed us up.  Unfortunately a campout came up and he wasn't able to go, so I begrudgingly convinced Adam to do it with me.  When he got there, he found some friends to hang out with and I ended up running the race by myself.

 These kids weren't too sure that they would want their picture taken.

This is how we looked when the race was over.

 Here is a snap shot of Adam after school on the last day of school.  (It rained and he had just walked in from riding the bus).  Compare that to the cute picture of him on the way to the first day of kindergarten.  A lot of change has happened in those 9 years!