The last couple of weeks, I’ve really been yearning to try snorkeling again.
The weather is finally warm enough for us to start using the pool, so recently I dug out my very old snorkel and was letting Christopher and David play around with it until I eventually broke down and bought each of them their own mask and snorkel set, along with a much less aged version for myself.
They’ve had theirs for a few days now, but today was the first day that I got to try mine out and I’ve got to say that it was even more fun than I had expected it was going to be!
Personally, I have a very love/hate relationship with the water. I enjoy it in theory, however I’m not the best swimmer and my anxiety kicks in when I’m in over my head … which is ironic in a way when you consider the couple of years that I was into scuba diving in my late teens! Nonetheless, I’d really like to get to a point where I’m more comfortable because I think as the kids get older we could have a lot of fun diving as a family, but if I’m going to take everyone out in the open water where I’m even more responsible for them, I know that I need to up my swimming game considerably…
Plus, not for nothing but these kids have all been taking swim lessons now for basically their entire lives! We started them in water babies classes at our local school as soon as they were old enough … six weeks, maybe?! … so seeing as Christopher for one is almost out of classes he’s been doing so well, I know that he’d love the adventure as long as his good, old dad can keep up! 😉
But today was a lot of fun – I threw on my mask and snorkel and just experimented a bit here and there while the kids were otherwise occupied, and even just did some bobbing around while I waited for Matthew to circle around in between diving into the pool. I also tried some diving myself, which is a surprisingly good workout I think because unlike the kids who are short enough to kick their way to the bottom, I found myself pretty much limited to just using my arms. 😯
I’m looking forward to doing it a lot more this summer, to the point where I just ordered some weighted sticks to practice diving for off of Amazon to use in between hunting for toys and whatnot that end up in our pool everyday! I don’t want to put the cart before the horse or anything, but maybe after a bit we’ll try packing up the crew and going to a beach where the kids can try swimming in salt water for a change.
Not sure how I feel about crowds vs COVID yet, but it’s something to shoot for and I think if I could take Christopher and David somewhere relatively tame where they could see a few actual fish out in the wild, it would be a HUGE DEAL for them and might even make it easier for them to slow down a little on future snorkeling expeditions!
P.S. I might need to splurge on a camera that can go underwater – that might be kind of fun. Even with the new frameless mask and dry snorkel that I picked up for myself, I’m already being reminded at just how expensive this hobby can be…