Grandma Jean recently moved to the area after landing a job at the local university. We were really excited about this - grandma's going to be close! We'd wanted to have family nearby for a while (it gets lonely out here on the frontier). The kids love having grandma visits, and maybe, just maybe, Dave and I would get an occasional DATE NIGHT!? (Wonders never cease). Jean is also not one of "those" mothers-in-law, that is, she's actually someone I really enjoy having around. We gab and giggle and complain about the things we can't complain to anybody else about, and we take care of each other.

Well - one unexpected side benefit of having Jean move to the area was that she moved into a lovely house that had a hot tub. A hot tub that she didn't really want to maintain. We volunteered to give it a good home. Jean volunteered to visit it at our house every so often.

Now, we all know there's no such thing as a free hot tub. We had to pour a concrete pad, get the thing moved (definitely not something I wanted to try myself), get a dedicated electrical supply hooked up, buy a new cover, make sure I knew how to do the chemical treatments, etc. etc. I even sprang for a solar shower that we bolted near the patio, so folks can rinse off before getting in/after getting out with warm running water (very nice, and much better than having the kids squishing water all over the carpet, since the nearest shower is upstairs). Thankfully, the innards of the spa seem to be in good working order; no immediate repairs needed.

I have to say that the look of complete GLEE when the kids hopped in this morning was great, and SO worth the trouble. Eleanor and Genevieve begged for the animal face sunglasses at the grocery store the other day, and while I'm not sure how they actually see out of them, I think they're pretty cute. We limited their time in the tub, since children in particular shouldn't be in hot tubs for too long (we're keeping the temp a bit on the low side anyway, since it's been a bazillion degrees outside recently and we really don't need to be warmed up much), but the kids LOVED their time in there. And as David and I relaxed next to each other in the lovely warm water this evening, we thought it was pretty spectacular, too.

THANKS GRANDMA!