Swim Lessons and Fish

Since the fall, we have been religiously going to the YMCA pool every Saturday morning for swim lessons.  After last summer we decided that we were done with having to watch the girls every second we were around water.  It is an important life skill, that's for sure.  Unfortunately we can't say that Saturday mornings were made easy with this additional activity, and it also didn't help that more often than not the girls were less than cooperative.

So we did what every good parent would do and we bribed them.  For our family, the bribe took the form of our first family pet - fish.  The girls had to each have three straight drama free Saturday mornings in order to qualify for their prize.  Amazingly enough, it happened by early December.  Of course, we seldom take action too quickly, and certainly couldn't get anything before we left town for the holidays, so we jumped into 2016 in January.

However, our lack of fish expertise quickly revealed itself when we discovered we would have to set up the tank and have the water ready for a few weeks before we actually got the fish.  Still, the girls were excited every step of the way and even found the simple task of pouring water into the tank worth a close look.

We commemorated the occasion with a fish photo, since there were no actual fish present to make their own faces.  We are happy to report that a week or two later we returned to the pet store and picked up two fine fish, named Bob and Alena.  The names were selected before the fish were chosen, which is why Bob is a female Dalmation Molly and Alena is a male Mickey Mouse Platy.  Both are in the tropical community fish family, which means we could have up to five of them in a 10-gallon tank if we so chose.  Up to this point, that choice has not been made.