I feel kind of bad for my kids. Because of Bill’s job and the demands of the summertime we never go places like the pool or the beach. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with taking them places but taking them both to water still scares the hell out of me.

At six years old Cameron can hardly swim. Sure, he’s got all the confidence in the world but he’s lacking in the skills department. He loves the water and has confidence, in my book that’s a recipe for disaster.

Poor little Logan will be four years old and is just now taking his first swim lessons.

I think that my own inability to swim has made it ok for me to not get the kids swimming. Not that it is ok, but in my mind it’s kind of like, “Well I can’t swim so it’s no big deal that they can’t.” The best I can do is keep myself alive until help comes. I guess if it meant saving one of the boys I could probably pull it off, I know the basics.

Part of The Summer of Mommyland was to get out of the comfort zone and not just for me, for the boys too. They can’t swim…This will be the summer they learn!

For the better part of the past four weeks both of the boys have been taking daily swim lessons. Monday through Thursday we spend an hour or so watching them learn how to not drown.

I have to give them both credit, they have improved ten fold in the short amount of time they’ve been going. Cameron can actually swim. He doesn’t have the endurance yet and the fact that he can’t even touch in the shallow end means he has to work harder than the other kids but he’s getting it.

Logan cried the first few lessons and really wanted nothing to do with swimming and he is now my little fishie. He’s not as confident as his older brother but he’s getting more comfortable in the water. For a kid who has hardly spent anytime in water outside of the bathtub, he doing an amazing job.

Do your kids like to swim? Were they late bloomers like mine?

I follow along with the challenges that Project Marriage puts out, I’ve even been known on occasion to participate.

When last week’s challenge came out I thought it was a great idea, sit down with your spouse and create a “bucket list“. While I loved the idea, I figured I have a better chance of getting the Easter Bunny to sit down with me than Bill so I shared the idea with my online friends and moved on. Little did I know Bill read the challenge and accepted it.

Imagine my surprise when Bill brings a bottle of wine, some strips of paper, a marker and a bucket out to me on the front porch. How stinking cute is he? A bucket to put our bucket list in, ok it’s a milk jug but close enough.

Our “bucket” (I have to repaint it).

So there we sat, on the front porch, enjoying a good bottle of wine while taking turns coming up with the things we’d like to accomplish by January. It was nice to talk about the things we wanted to do and laugh at some of the silly things we came up with.

Will we get to them all? Probably not, but at least now we have some goals to work towards together.

Our list excludes things like: Take a weekend away with no kids and no turf. Redo the home office. And buy new bedroom furniture.

Sure, they’re pretty lame as far as bucket lists go, there will be no summiting Mount Everest for us, but they’re things that we can work towards together. Things that maybe the other person didn’t know we’re so important to us.

This time of year quality time together is hard to come by and to sit outside and enjoy a beautiful evening while having a real conversation with Bill was something rare and special. The actual challenge was to make a summer bucket list but summers are tough in the Turf Lifestyle, so we gave ourselves a little more time.

Did you take this Project Marriage challenge? What’s on your couples Bucket List?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad