Pool test drive

As nobody turned up to service and clean the pool yesterday, Bernard spent over two hours thoroughly cleaning it out and washing down the patio area.  Harrison couldn't wait to try it out so I joined him in the water whilst Bernard worked on the patio.  We'd brought a small inflatable float with us to aid Harrison's confidence and he was happily walking up and down the pool with it whilst patiently waiting for me to acclimatise to the 'freezing' water!! 

Finally finishing his chores, Bernard had been in the pool for about five minutes when a man appeared. "Hello, I've come to clean your pool. Is it ok to come in?" Typical! Apparently there was a backlog yesterday so he didn't manage to get to us.  He belonged to a pool company who have just taken over the maintenance contract.  As it was now 12:40pm It seemed like a good time to start making lunch.  Harrison and I left Bernard and the man to have a conversation about pool maintenance and the condition of our particular pool.  Although Bernard had done a great job in cleaning it, the man could see that the previous company had not maintained it properly. He said that they would need to drain it completely at the end of the season to give the bottom an indepth clean.  He discovered why the filter wasn't working too. Apart from the timer switch which was not set, the main filter in a big brown drum to the side of the property was completely clogged up and had to be washed out.

We settled down to eat our lunch watching the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (after watching the second part yesterday!)  I think we must have caught it at the beginning because we managed to miss a fair chunk of the afternoon sun! Watching the Harry Potter movies is a huge breakthrough for Harrison so I didn't feel that the afternoon was wasted.  Up until now he would only watch the first film in the series seated.  He would view the Chamber of Secrets from his hiding place beside the TV unit and refused to be in the same room if any of the subsequent films were playing.  Harrison had chosen to put the films on both yesterday and today so we asked him what the difference was here.  He replied that it was less scary because there was no surround sound.

With Sunday shopping hours less restrictive over here, we headed off to the Florida Mall at 5pm.  By the time we came out it was starting to get dark and our return journey along the I192 looked really picturesque:

We stopped of at Walmart for Harrison to choose some new pool toys which he would have tried out tonight had it not been so dark!  

The entrance to our villa complex looked quite pretty too:

Another first for Harrison today was eating (or rather swallowing whole) a small piece of melon.  One of my objectives for the summer is to get him eating some fruit.  I thought that melon was most like cucumber (which he loves), so decided to start with that.