Night At Plaza Pool

I was on my way to join Mia and Craig at the Plaza Housing Pool on base here for a night-time pool party some friends were having. The phone rang.

"Mama!"
"Hi, baby, what's up?"
"Are you coming? You have to go in the POOL with me because I can't go in the big pool without you!"
"What? Why?"
"There's a TEST!"
"So take the test."
"You have to be 10 years old to take the test Dada said!"
"Put your father on the phone...."

I established with him that there's no age limit on the test, and she's perfectly capable of passing it as a level 4 swimmer; ahem.

I arrived at the party with my camera and after saying hi to the adults, I spotted Mia in the pool.
I asked Craig if she got some kind of sympathy vote, and he said, "Nope. She took the test, passed it, and now she's welcome to do whatever she wants in there." My confident kid jumped right in - swam the LENGTH of the pool (not across, the length - this is a big pool.) and floated for a minute and tread water for a minute. Now she has a bracelet to wear at any of the USMC base pools.

You can see her bracelet and her still fantastic diving form here:


It was pitch black outside, the pool itself was lit underwater, but the outside lighting made for some interesting exposures here... so bear with me at ISO 3200 and 50mm at f1.2 for this stuff. (if you care... if not, move along)

I was pretty impressed at the stopped action here.

Much more light when she was under water. Look at my little fishie!

Hello there.... Dara, eat your heart out!

It's too bad she hates swimming. Torture, I tell you. They literally turned off all the lights when it was time to get out and 9 and the kid was STILL whining about having to leave.

Side note - there were a few corpsman on the sidelines of the pool, not swimming. I asked why and they said, "Small pox." They had been vaccinated that day for an upcoming Iraq deployment. Seriously. They STILL think we're going to get small pox in Iraq? Annoying. And just plain unfair. But thanks to you guys - for staying out of the pool and for your service. I appreciate it.