Oh no...those darn bugs!

After living in Tracy for 4 1/2 years, the time has come to drain and refill our swimming pool with fresh water since the water has become "flat". Anson set up the pump late Friday night and Saturday morning it was basically empty. We didn't tell the kids we were doing it so their reaction to the empty pool the next morning was entertaining.

Camden was the first one to see the empty pool as he climbed up on the desk in our office to sit next to Anson and the computer. He looked out the window and said "look". Anson reacted like he was surprised and said, "What happened?". Camden said, "Somebody dranked all the water!" Anson said, "Oh no, who drank all that water?" Camden thought and stared seriously at the empty pool for a second and said with a deep voice, serious expression and lisp, "The bugs did it. The bugs drankeded all the water." He just kept staring at the empty pool with his "holy cow serious face expression" while Anson held back from laughing too loud.

Sydney on the other hand, basically F R E A K E D O U T! We are learning and probably know better that we should prepare her for anything unusual that might happen that we can foresee. We walked her out to see the pool once she woke up and she grabbed her face with both hands and gasped. She was terrified that our pool was runined forever. We seriously need to prepare the poor girl and get her some therapy. She is a worrier like me....so I should know better.

By the way, the pool looks a lot bigger without water. A very big hole in the ground.

So....how long do you think it would take to drain a pool with 30,000 gallons of water? Well, I am very lucky to have my very own personal science/math dude in my home. Anson started the pump around 10 pm and he wanted to make sure the pool wasn't going to drain past the motor while we were asleep. I made fun of him when he carried a pole out to the back yard to the pool and started making marks on it to track how fast it was draining. After the pole measuring and coming into the house to do some calculations, he figured that we would wake up to a bone dry pool so he set up our Christmas light timer for 5 hours and said that would leave it a little bit above the safe level.

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Side note: I am married to a Bioengineer who specializes in microfluidics. He recently told me he is working on building a micro-maze that miniature, 1 millimeter, genetically engineered, see-through worms will crawl around so he can take pictures of their fluorescent neurons firing when they find the "cheese" in the maze. OK...!! I really have no clue what he does or why we should worry about the firing neurons of worms. Another thought comes to mind, why worms? What happened to the mice. Mice sound a lot easier than a 1 millimeter invisible worm. I guess mice are out and worms are the new trend. I have a hard time understanding my hubby's Ph.D. mind and work, but at last I got to see the Ph.D. in action with the pool calculations (even though he said he used 8th grade math...yeah right, like all 8th graders are going to run to my back yard with a pole and do some calculations). But he was exactly right! It took eight hours total to drain 30,000 gallons of water and thirty hours to fill. We have heard that it should only cost us about $50 to fill. I hope so! I also hope that it will be easier to manage the chemicals and more cost-effective with new water.