our evening swim

Raise your hand if you've ever seen me in a bathing suit.

Exactly.

I didn't even own one until 2 summers ago. And I've only put it on about twice since then.

But yesterday evening after dinner, the kids asked if they could go back outside and swim. This was a little unusual, but I said, "sure." Then I cleaned for a few minutes and sat down at the computer to just browse the internet. The thought entered my mind, "go surprise the kids and swim with them."

So I did.

We were having a good ol' time for about half an hour when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, I see a man burst through our front gate. I turned my head around and saw a strange man running through my backyard chasing a cow. Yes, a cow. In my backyard.

A second man quickly followed, and then a uniformed police officer. A few minutes later another uniformed officer arrived, then more men. Then neighborhood kids were gathering at my fence. Then neighborhood adults. There must have been 20 people. And five of them are running around my backyard chasing a cow.

And remember...I'm in the pool with the kids!

We were held hostage for about an hour. I could see in my neighbor's windows that the police car lights were flashing in front of our house. I could also see many cars stop and get a peek at what might be going on. My one big thought was that my husband would come home and see the commotion in the front of the house and really worry that something bad had happened.

It took a long while, and several different attempts by several different men to lasso the scared cow. At one point the cow even ran into our house. See, earlier Emma had left the pool to go to the bathroom and when she returned, she left the door open. So the cow walked right in. I could tell the men were hesitant to just walk in my house, but seeing as I'm yelling from the pool, "he's in our house," I'm sure they felt it was okay to get him out.

After they finally lassoed the cow, they tied him to our basketball standard. After the cow calmed down, we were given the okay to leave the pool. Every bit of pride in my body screamed, "I'm not getting out with all these people here!" But it was almost 9pm, dark, and getting chilly. Emma was shivering. So I took a deep breath, grabbed the ladder and got out of the pool. Then I high-tailed it into the house and took a quick shower.

It took a while, but the men finally coaxed the cow out our back fence and the ordeal was over. I finally got the kids calmed down and the phone rang. It was my husband. The first thing he said to me was, "where have you been?" Boy, did I have a story to tell him.

I wish I had some pictures to share. Maybe I can track down those kids who were taking pictures with their cell phones and ask them to email me some.