Swimming

Journal Jar - How old were you when you learned to swim?  Who taught you?

From what I can tell from the picture above I learned when I was quite young...and I would say my Mom taught me.

I decided in our case when and who weren't as fun as where.  Considering I am not a big swimmer because of the hassle of getting into a swim suit, getting wet, getting cleaned up, fixing your hair, mostly because when I am wet I am cold especially if it is dark.  Even in Tucson Arizona where you could swim more of the year than not.   I just don't swim unless there is another reason...like...snorkeling.  However growing up we swam in the lawn water, in the irrigation ditches, in the canal, at Givens hot spring, The canal in the park, public swimming pools, Idaho city hot springs too, a cow tank, and now the ocean   I am partial to warm water as a kid Nancy Stettler and I made a swimming pool out of tractor tires and black plastic.....it was more like a hot tub size wise.  Speaking of swimming pools Nancy had an above pool and the best time we had in it was one night sleeping in it without any water....it felt safe and we could see the whole sky, it was great. 

We took swimming lessons as kids though down at a pool in Caldwell.  My favorite thing about swimming .is the memory of car pooling with friends and then always being hungry on the way home so we got an ice cream or one time we ate marsh mellows (I remember that, because I choked on a marshmallow and it ended up coming out of my nose (TMI), while riding home in the back of a station wagon.  On another side note we had no seat belts sitting back there.  I loved the fact that my mom made us a towel dress which was very warm an covering so we didn't have to change at the pool.   Here is a picture of one of the towel dresses made up, it was just two towels sewn together leaving arm and head holes.  I also had another bigger one later with a zipper up the front.

The pictures up above are of Dale and Larry swimming on the lawn and then Phillip playing in the water on the second one., if you look hard you can see that I was quite pregnant, I thought it was with Timothy but I am not sure does Phillip look two or four?  The plants look more like June that the end of February. I learned enough as a kid and then I took a swim class at BYU and passed the final with many different strokes.  I am certainly grateful to have learned so that I can go into the ocean with out much concern of drowning.