I see this at the community pool every summer. Either a family or a mother with a child or two will show up. They will take off outclothes, put on sunscreen, find a nice place to site and then go in the water. If it is a family sometimes one parent will swim with the kids and the other will sit on a lounge chair in the sun with a book or magazine. The kids will splash and jump and float with a noodle or those arm floatie things, and they are having a great time.

Then less than half an hour after they walked through the gate, the parent or parents are ushering the children back to where they set their stuff, and will assist them in drying off, putting on their outer clothes and they will leave. I do not understand why they are going through that much trouble for so little time actually in the water. The families that then walk home, maybe I see it as a family walk with a short session in the pool as a bonus. THe families that then pack into their SUV and drive home, which since they live in the community is less then half a mile or so for even the furthest homes from the pool. Probably takes them longer to get the kids in their suits and gather the floatie toys and towel, pack them in the SUV and drive to the pool then they actually spend in the water.

If we have less than an hour of available time we go out in the yard and tell the kids we can play outside but we can not go to the pool because there is not enough time. I do not understand these people at all. I am not even going to get into the wasted gas driving to the pool, but I do not know what they are doing that means they have to leave the pool so soon. The same people do this two or three times a week in the summer. We will be at the pool on a Saturday for hours and I mean hours. We go after nap time, pack afternoon snack, supper, and bedtime snack too. We go home shower off the chlorine and the kids read and go straight to bed. We love when the pool opens because now we know that our children are getting plenty of exercise. In the winter they get cabin fever, so we want them to be out as much as possible the rest of the year.