Baby Beach Pool Bust

"Winter's a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put me in summer and I'll be a Happy Snowman!" I can't tell you how much I love Summer. Okay, I love Fall too, but that's farther away than Summer is right now. The cold gets old in Winter, and here it's dry and dusty and blah in the Spring (the oak trees lose their leaves and our wildflower selection is awful...there are more wildflowers in Tucson in the spring than there are here all year long-dumb). Summer comes and I get so excited. Green leaves. Rain (crossing our fingers on that one!). Swimming. Camping. Family reunions. Sleeping outside. Oh I'm excited to have Summer here. Later this summer we're heading to a mini family reunion in San Diego and I am beyond excited. I'm collecting pins for things to do, things to bring, what to wear, etc. We recently were sent a pin that flopped for the submitter, but I think we'll do a retest of it and see if we can't help work out the bugs when we go. 

The Original Pin:

As far as I can tell, this photo wasn't pinned from a website, but instead was uploaded to Pinterest by a Pinner. I've backtracked and searched and followed pin trails and I can't figure out who the original pinner was to give them credit. But, this is the caption on most of the pins I'm finding: 

"Toddler pool idea I came up with when we couldn't find a baby pool at the beach...Clear shower curtain liner $3.00. Dig a shallow hole...my husband and his friend submerged the shower curtain in the ocean water then brought it back to the hole. You can also use sand buckets to fill...my husband also dug a trench on the outside of the hole so we could tuck in the corners and border of the left over shower curtain...Then packed the top with sand...it kept the kids from pushing the border into the pool."

Braizee, our submitter, said, "Was super excited to make this awesome beach pool for my 7 month old twins. Lasted a good 2 minutes before it was destroyed. Looked like an awesome idea but was a complete fail!"

                             The Pinstrosity:

First, I love the tent stakes Braizee used...that's genius.

Now, having not tested this one out yet (but it's on the list) I don't know 100% that my ideas will work, but here is what I will be doing to try and up our chances of success on our San Diego trip:

• The hole in the first picture is pretty abrupt. What I mean by that is that the sides are more vertical than sloped. More like a regular kiddie pool. 
• With the "vertical" sides, they were able to get a generally uniform depth of water in the kiddie pool, and they filled the whole bottom with water. I imagine this will help to keep the plastic in place and hold it against the bottom and sides of the sand hole. 
• I definitely will be trying the tent stakes. 
• The pinner described digging a trench around the main pool hole to put the edges of the plastic in, and then burying the edges well. This is the key step, I'm imagining, to keeping the plastic liner from getting pulled in. The weight of the sand should help to keep the liner in place and to make it much harder from getting pulled in. 
• I'll buy a shower liner, but I also have a tarp that is much bigger and could make a bigger kiddie pool if we wanted. I'll bring that too in case the shower liner is just not quite big enough. 

Emilee gets her tonsils removed today and can finally kick this strep bug she's battled all semester. If you have any spare happy tonsil-free thoughts today, send them her way!