Mid-Winter Swim

My friend Jen posted today about their hotel stay over the weekend. It reminded me that I had neglected to post pictures from our fun hotel stay at the end of December.

We received some money as a Christmas gift for our family from Steve's Mom, and instead of buying more stuff, we decided to use it to do something together as a family.

Our boys LOVE to swim, and they LOVE to stay in hotels. Several years ago, we took them to stay in a hotel in the middle of downtown Dallas. The pool was on the top floor, so you could be in the pool and were surrounded by sky scrapers on all sides. After that, whenever Seth would catch a glimpse of downtown Dallas, he would say excitedly, "Go building, go bed!".

We found a place really close to home that had an indoor salt water pool. We have been spoiled by salt water pools now...love them. The Hilton Garden Inn in Richardson/North Dallas:

It was really new, clean, had huge rooms, and the pool was perfect!

It also had sleep number beds, and you could adjust each side from soft to firm.

Stock photos found in Google Images

Needless to say, our boys had a wonderful time in that pool! We spent about 3 hours in it the first afternoon, then got up the next morning and swam for a couple hours before we had to check out.

A humorous story...when we went down to the pool in the morning, there was a maintenance man in slacks and a dress shirt with a net in the pool. It appeared someone had thrown a bunch of coins into the pool the night before. He was able to pull them into a pile with the net, but he couldn't get them into the net. I could see by the look on his face that he was wondering how the heck he was going to get the coins out of the pool.

Before I even stuck my toe in the water, I told him that we would get the coins out for him. By "we", I meant Seth. It was in the shallow end, and I figured Seth could dive down and get them. He was extremely relieved, and asked me several times if I was sure.

I then noticed there was a water hose adding (cold) water to the pool. I thought perhaps the rowdies from the previous evening that had been making wishes with their coins might have splashed some significant water out.

Wow. The water was *cold*. Like, "never would have put my head under the water" kind of cold. And it was quickly obvious that Seth doesn't have enough strength to keep his body down at the bottom of the pool AND pick up coins at the same time. He just kept floating back to the surface.

AND my husband happened to decide he wasn't feeling getting in the pool that morning. Only the hot tub for him. Convenient since it was *cold* and someone had to dive down to the bottom and get all the coins we (me) had promised to get.

It probably took me diving down 20 times to get all the coins. The bottom of the pool was rough and it was really hard to pick them up. After about my 10th dive, the maintenance man came back in with 4 Hershey chocolate bars for us to say thank you.

Later, maintenance man #2 showed up. We had spoken with him the evening before when we were swimming. He was carrying a gift basket full of snacks and treats that was all wrapped up with a bow on top.

Maintenance man #1 had called him at home to let him know there were coins in the pool, and to ask him to bring his swim suit so that he could get in and get them out. He was not a happy camper (he was an older gentleman in his late 50's).

So when he arrived and found out we had taken care of it, he rounded up a gift basket for us. Super nice of him, especially since we were expecting nothing!

All this to say:

Stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Richardson if you ever get the chance. Great hotel, beautiful pool, reasonable rates and really friendly people.

The End.