Making The Jelly and Breaking The Rules

Even though my posts have been rather sporadic, we have been doing lots of stuff.  Nothing earth-shattering...just stuff.

I love springtime when the little violets pop out of the ground.  We had a representative from a lawn service knock on the door recently.  The guy wanted to know who took care of cutting and raking the lawn and I told him that I have a ten year old who does the job quite nicely.  Then the guy asked if my ten year old took care of watering and fertilizing our lawn and I told him, "Of course not!  God takes care of that!"

Then he somewhat sarcastically asked if God got out all the weeds in the yard, like those wild violets and dandelions and such.  I looked quite appalled and told him that I USE those plants!  I don't want to get them out of the yard!!!  He could see his services would not be useful to me and he was wasting his time with me and he promptly moved on to another neighbour's house.

So this is what I do with those horrible weeds that infiltrate my yard and make us a target for aspiring landscapers.  Violet Jelly!  It is great on a PB&J and even better on biscuits.  The kids love it.

I was really, really, excited about the violets this year.  I noticed them flowering in my deceased neighbour's yard before they came up at my house.  So my first two batches came from Miss Dottie's yard.  The jelly tasted fantastic and worked up very nicely.  Since she had a song for everything, I can only assume that she sang a violet growing song from beyond which made them turn out so well!  The third and final batch came from my back yard and turned out okay, but not like the first two batches!

Miss Dottie's yard.  There were tons of them everywhere!  

This is my first two batches all done up.  Purty, huh?

A new fun new activity we have found is the indoor water park at the other YMCA about 20 minutes away.  A fantastic activity for when it's cold and gloomy outside.  There's a nice splash pool for the kiddies, zero depth entry for babies, a curly slide and even a small lazy river!  

It's great for evenings when Daddy needs some time to himself.  I can take them for a couple of hours and they come back tired and mostly ready for bed.  I even take them home in their jammies! 

It didn't take me long to become the worst parent there.  This was our second trip.  The first time, I saw kids wearing floaties and such.  This trip, I brought Lydia's swim suit ring and it wasn't long before the lifeguard came up to me and told me the suit wasn't Coastguard approved and therefore, could not be worn.  Kids were wearing stuff like Lydia's suit the last time we were there with no problems with the lifeguards.  The guy hands me a foam block to strap to her back.  Huh?  This object which pushes her face forward into the water is safer than the float which went around her whole body and kept the upper half of her body out of the water?  *sigh*  Okay.  

I have no problem, if that is the rule, but none of this was explained or indicated the previous time we were there! 

Then Lawrence and Lydia split up on me and started playing about 20 feet apart.  I stuck with Lydia because she was much more likely to slip and fall face first into the water with that stupid yellow foam strapped on her back.  Mind you, the water was ankle deep, but I got the whistle again, so everyone had to play where I could physically touch them.  *sigh* Okay.  That's legitimate.  I get it.  It wasn't my intention for the kids to split up, but we made a better effort to stay together.  Lawrence had to pout on the bench out of the water for a while, but finally got the rule down pat.  Incidentally, we ditched the strapped Coastguard-approved yellow foam after a while.  It was too scary. 

Then Archie got me whistled again.  They give different colored wrist bands to kids, depending on their swimming skill level.  Green is a free swimmer.  Yellow needs a parent in the pool, and red means they need to be in a certain area of the pool within touching distance of a parent.  I found out all of this after the whistle when I approached the lifeguard to ask for clarification on the rule I was presently breaking and to apologize for being such a trouble-maker.  The rule is different at our regular Y.  Archie had previously taken the test for the yellow band at our regular Y.  So that's the color he asked for when we arrived at this Y.  He swam all over the waterpark pool (very shallow--the deepest part of the waterpark pool is up to his armpits) all evening.  The whistle blows and the lifeguard said Archie couldn't go out of the sprinkler kiddie area without a parent.

This time I tried to pleasantly explain to the guard that this wasn't the rule the other time we were there and I was okay with following rules, as long as I understand them.  She told me that he had to have a green band to go to the lazy river section and slide.  Mind you, he had been sliding over and over and over again all evening!  *sigh again*  All this conflict with the lifeguards was stressing me out!

Archie approached the lifeguard and said he wanted to test as a green band.  So he jumped in the deep end of the indoor lap pool (not in the water park), treaded water for a minute, and all the other stuff they had him do and got his green band!  He was very pleased with himself!  He slid down the slide again, walked the lazy river by himself (properly decorated with a green band) and we left ten minutes after he took the test.  Done.

I will try to be less of a slacker, unconcerned parent next time.  They probably have me on some sort of bad parent list and it will follow me for the rest of my life at the YMCA.