Testing, testing...

...is this thing still here?!
   There is quite a few things to catch up on including our first summer in our home and both girls in elementary school, I will do my best but there's a chance I will be jumping around a little bit.
First let's have some fun think back to the summer of 2017, our best yet thanks to the pool.

   When we bought this house the pool was beyond disgusting. It was a huge pond of living organisms and when I stared into the black/green abyss of it, I was terrified there were new species being formed in the bacteria nastyness that was our pool. Fortunately we never found new species, just a billion large tadpoles.

The hot tub portion of the pool (this was the day we took the cover off for the first time)

Terrifying

One of two bins of tadpoles found in our pool

   When spring rolled around we started the process of getting the pond turned back into a pool. We called in reinforcements (Apollo Pools) since we weren't quite at expert status on pool knowledge...or even on the radar of pool knowledge. We knew nothing about owning a pool except what people had told us: biggest pain in the ass.
Sweet.
   Justin from Apollo came out once or twice a week for a few weeks, adding chemicals, scrubbing the sides, scooping stuff out, and checking out all the equipment (filter, pump, valves, thingamajig, doohickey). Brian spent his evenings scrubbing and scooping as well. It was a group effort and eventually we started to see improvement...and the bottom of the pool! I wasn't completely convinced there was a bottom, my imagination had run wild and I had been picturing there was no bottom because it had rotted away and the only reason there was water in there was because...well actually I hadn't thought that far.
The point is, we were thrilled to find out that our pool was actually in decent shape, just needed mass amounts of cleaning and to be acid washed. We were fortunate enough that we only had two bits of bad news when all was said and done:
1. We needed a new water heater
2. We could not acid wash yet since the ground was so wet (we had an unusually wet winter, which is saying a lot for Oregon) and emptying the pool could mean it would pop up out of the ground and then the pool would be done and we'd have to throw dirt in it and pretend it never existed except for the fact that we would have to face our daughters who had put their hopes and dreams into this pool.

So all in all it wasn't horrible news :)
We did buy a water heater so that solved problem number one. To solve problem two, we just scrubbed as much as could and then would have to wait until the season was over and the ground dried out to empty and acid wash.
Honestly, we are so fortunate that the pump still works as well as our pool cleaner, Sam (vacuum). Every week the pool continued to get cleaner and cleaner as the chemicals started working, the pool water was circulating, and our vacuum was going.

Less black, more green

We pressure washed around the pool 

We can see the bottom! It looks like a toilet, but hey!

Justin acid washed the top step to give us a teaser of what it will look like after it gets acid washed

I thought it was terrifying when it was pure black...I think this is almost more terrifying!

Getting excited as it clears up more and more each day

This was the most they would drain it, so we scrubbed and scooped

And ta da!!

Let's do this!!

Still scrubbing 

Beautiful

It was a summer where most our pictures include the pool in the background or a drink in hand...truly wonderful.