The girl likes to swim.

We fixed the spa, and now, we swim, rain, hail or shine.  It's a cold snap here in our down-under Spring (by "cold snap" I mean slightly cool, you might need a cardi weather, not icy freezing-ness, it is Brisbane after all).  This does not stop the girl.  And her swimming ring of power.  Oh, the cute. 

Renovating fun: Spa edition

We had a swamp instead of a spa for over a year, when all the render coming off the concrete started wrecking the pump and filter, which meant we had to turn them off.  Turning off the pump and filter made our very own gross pond, complete with toads, frogs, and slime.  DinnerDad and Smash emptied and cleaned it out last summer, literally a week before the floods we had here, we had so much rain that it filled it back up to the top again!

In the meantime, we resort to this!

I wish I had a pic of it full and swamp-like, it was really impressively awful.  But here it is, drained but not cleaned.  As you can see (ignoring the revolting slime coating), it's more like a small pool than a spa.  A pool with seats: the best kind.

Care for a dip?

Flaking render, with bonus slime!

Anyhoo, we finally got it fixed!  It was cleaned, acid washed, and prepped for special rubber-based paint.  Then painted and dried for a week, while we replaced the light and serviced the pump.  Finally, we got to fill it up, chlorined the crap out of the gunked-up pipes for a week, and then balanced the water.

Filling up the spa (pre-chlorine).

On Sunday, Lolly went swimming in it!!

We're still working on the fence, and DinnerDad is building a deck!

Just in time for summer!

In which Lolly goes swimming.

We stayed at Quay West suites in Sydney, which has a speccy pool on the top floor, well, two pools.  Seriously ritzy.  This is the view from one side.  A bit nice, really.

I mean, check this place out!  Just out of shot on the left is the spa. There's also a massive window there on the right that you look out of from the water, across the harbour.

Here is Lolly and DinnerDad, Lolly has this float-y red ring that fits her perfectly.  During the time we were there, she went from bumbling about with me hanging on to her (and not allowed to let go!), to swimming around herself from one end to the other, with a combo of kicking stylings.  Not without her red ring of swimming power, though.  Her one effort without it resulting in much sinking and spluttering.

The pool on one side had a panel you can see through, DinnerDad snapped this one of Lolly and I.

We were only there three nights, and went swimming four times.  Lolly is VERY keen on it. She loved swimming, and playing games (pretending to be a turtle and so on).  It was pretty lovely.  And just the right close-to-home low key fun we needed on a happy but really pretty sad trip.

The cute!! It burns!