'How to put up an above ground pool' by Nick and Kristin (mostly Nick)

I love pools. LOVE THEM. To the point that when we were living in Davie, pretty much every day I had off, I was at the pool. Needless to say, living in Crawfordville, I've been in a little bit of a pool shock. I complain about it all the time. So my mom and Nick were at Target the other day and saw a 12 foot pool on an end cap for $32! That's right, you heard me, only thirty two dollars!!! So anyway, on Tuesday we finally had time to assemble the pool. For step by step instructions, please see below.

Before you begin, make sure you kill the grass that will be under your pool. You can do this by any means necessary including but not limited to killer bug spray, bleach in a spray bottle or actual grass killer. (I'll go ahead and save you some time and advise you to just get it over with and buy the damn grass killer...trust me.) Once your grass has turned sufficiently brown, select a date and time to set up your pool. Apparently the best time to do this is in the heat of the day, when it's about 110 degrees outside.

OK, step 1: Make a crop circle. Or in our case, a crop egg. This can most easily be done with a riding lawn mower. You know when it's the right size when you walk outside to find your husband riding in circles laughing his crazy evil laugh! At this point, just go ahead and tell him to stop.

Step 2: Take the huge roll of plastic that you had origionally intended to be the worlds largest slip-n-slide and cut it to fit in your crop circle. (Sorry about the slip-n-slide, Katie. :( I'm sure we can get another super long roll of plastic)



Step 3: Get an increadably small amount of sand and spread it around on top of the plastic to try to level out the ground.

Step 4: Have a long, heated debate with your spouse regarding previously mentioned sand and how, while the concept is good, we are actually doing nothing to level the ground. One can even argue that it made it worse.

Step 5: Lay the pool on top of the plastic/sand combination and according to the instructions, let it sit in the sun. No worries, because you are doing this in the heat of the day, it will only take about 30 seconds for the pool to get almost too hot to touch.

Step 6: Put together the top PVC-like things for the frame of the pool. The last one will be hard to get together but as the instruction manual states: "You can do it!"



Step 7: Attach the leg pieces.

Step 8: Fill with water. Note: at this point feel free to let your baby splash around in the actively filling pool with her clothes on. Why not, right?

Catch Up

Well, so much for blogging every week. Hmm. Well I suppose we should play catch up a little bit. We went down to Hollywood for a week which was super fun. Nick helped his dad out with a little bit of home renovations that they are doing. And by a little bit, I mean that they tore apart their entire house except for the bedrooms. Like, kitchen and bathroom down to the studs, carpet up, craziness. It's going to look great when it's done! The amount of work that Carol and George are doing is increadible and hopefully Nick was able to help put a small dent in it. My 30th birthday was on the Friday so on Saturday, they threw me a suprise party. It was a luau theme and I can honestly say that although I kind of had an idea that there would be a suprise party, it was the biggest suprise that they have ever gotten by me. I'm pretty observant (nosy, whatever).



Anyway, it was a fantastic party!!! Even some of my old dance girls came!



But the highlight, by far, was this cardboard thing. Everyone loved it, especially Tard!



While everyone was setting up for the party, Alexa and I spent the day at Grammy's house. We ate lunch, played, made pizzelle and measured Alexa on "the wall".



What is that in her hand, you ask? That is the large end of the bread loaf we gave her to chew on. And, yes, she ate the whole thing. (How could you go to Grammy's and not eat bread?!)



I just realized that by asking what's in her hand, you could have just as easily answered 'Ricky's teeth'. For some reason the child likes putting her hand in people's mouths. Kind of gross. So, yeah. The party was good. The 4th of July was typical and relatively uneventful. Family, BBQ that kind of stuff. The next day we got Alexa's ears pierced (even though mom didn't want it) by Dr. Alexander. She did great. She cried more when they put the dots on her ears then when she actually pierced them! Crazy baby! You can see one of her ears in this picture. We took it at when we were at breakfast with Nick's dad. Alexa decided to reach over, grab a piece of my french toast and smear it all over her face. Awesome.