Now that Ella is 3, I don’t think the baby pool in the backyard is going to get it anymore.
Recently, we took our 1st little family vaca and headed to St. Louis to the Magic House and the Zoo (that’s a whole other story!) and Ella fell in LOVE with the pool!
My husband, Brian and I decided to search out a great pool close to Chatham. Well, to my surprise and disappointment…there ISN’T a public pool in Chatham. So, we called around and searched the internet and found that there are a lot of pools in the Springfield area, but most of them are private and charge a large fee to join. We decided that before we’d join a private one, we’d check out the Springfield Park District’s public pools and today Ella and I embarked on our 1st journey to the Veterans Memorial pool.
I didn’t think I’d be able to just do a drive-by to check it out with Ella in the car, we were going to have to go in and swim if it was anywhere near acceptable. When we got there we were informed that the baby pool was closed, but there was a 2-3ft section in the large pool. Cool! I wasn’t thrilled about sitting in 5 inches of baby pee anyway. The fee was the best part though – $3 for me and FREE for Ella! Gotta LOVE anything free these days! We entered through the locker room/bathrooms/shower rooms. They were just OK. I didn’t let Ella take her shoes off in the shower area where we changed because the floor didn’t look like it had been sanitized in a while and a used wadded up diaper was on the floor right beside us. YUK! But, the pool area ended up being nice! Very clean and was very large. There were plastic lounge chairs all around there were not many people there at all. Hey, I thought…this isn’t too bad.
Ella was so excited she could walk around in the big pool in the 2ft section and mommy was extremely happy I didn’t have to hold her head above the water in the 4ft section for 2 hrs! It was getting close to 1pm and we were getting hungry and tired and I didn’t see a concession stand, though I didn’t search one out. At about that time…I saw children start to file out off the locker room area towards the pool. They kept coming, and coming, and coming! I bet there were 50-75 or more of them! OH MY! 75 five to eight years olds closed in on me and the other couple of mommies with our small children under 3. LOL! Needless to say…it was about time for us to go! Now, I have nothing against children ages 5-8 but…when they’re jumping and throwing and screaming around me…well..it’s a little much!
So, we packed up and headed home. All in all…I think this was a fine pool, but if you go after 1pm be ready for lots and lots of daycare children.
On to the next pool!
