Swimming

We went to the swimming pool today. A heated swimming pool the best kind. We took Farrah's aunt, uncle, cousin and nanna and met up with her brother and future sister in law who were doing laps to get in shape for their wedding (know that feeling).

Anywho, we wanted to take Farrah's little 4 year old cousin swimming as swimming is a massive part of Aussie culture and we wanted to make sure that she wouldn't miss out when she was older. I know from my experience that if you can't swim or are scared of the water when you are younger it can really have a huge impact on your social life as kid.
I remember the first time my mum took me to a swimming lesson, I screamed the whole entire time and my mum had to take me home because I was to disruptive to the other kids. There was also another time when I had swimming lessons when I was older where I was so afraid to put my head under water that the swimming instructor told me he would knock my head off if I didn't put my head under water in turn to make me scared enough to do it and my sister cried (if my memory serves me correctly).

Every swimming carnival at school I managed to avoid having to get into the pool at all for fear of not being able to swim very well. So on the honeymoon; jumping off the big rock into a moving river and swimming with dolphins in the ocean were huge for me, I really had to push past the fears of my youth to do them.

Back to Farrah's cousin... at first she was petrified of getting in the water to the point where she was shaking I think it took about an hour to get her in with a massive group effort from Farrah and I and her parents and nanna. It was a slow process, first step involved me sitting in the kiddy pool and the others would come and splash me from the edge and I would overreact in a comical kind of way as maybe mister bean might do in the same situation. She thought this was hilarious and as everyone began to splash me she got more and more confident with the water eventually walking ankle depth then splash me, it was very cute!
It took no time from then to forget what ever fears she had to disappear until she was swimming with Farrah and I in the olympic pool it was great to see her overcome her fear of what ever it was in such a small time and be apart of that. I'm thankful for all the people who helped me overcome my fears though mine took a considerably longer time to overcome.