Sunday was a photo album type of day, you know a special kind of day that forms pictures in your mind and gives you snapshots to put in a scrapbook; the kind of day you take out and look fondly at as the pages of time pass. After church my grandson and his family came for lunch. Two year old Ronnie and his little seven month old sister, Alyssa got acquainted with the new wading pool I bought them at Alco last week. Alyssa kicked and enjoyed this outdoor bathtub and Ronnie giggled as he splashed water at me.

I have a picture of Ronnie last summer getting his first taste of the joys of cool water in the summertime. I had turned the sprinkler on very low and in that photo he is walking carefully up to that shower. He had fun sticking his feet in the "wa-wa."

As the years slip by, like pages in an aged album, pictures and memories walk through my mind. Although some of my loved ones are gone it still seems to me as I gaze into treasured photos snapped by the old cameras that I could step into them and once again talk to my loved ones.

My memories are like those old photos, they come in a flash. One evening last week as I was driving through Commerce City a young girl, who was beating the heat by running through the sprinklers, brought back with a smile a cherished remembrance of my sister and I running through the spraying water. There isn't a snapshot of that, but I can still see it very clearly when I close my eyes.

Summertime and heat send us searching for relief. I learned to love the cool water when I was a child living in California. My family spent many days going to the ocean many times with my Aunt Cecil, Uncle Gail and their cute little boy, Billy Gail. The only photos of that happy group wading in the ocean are those stored in my mind among my album of favorite memories.

Colorado doesn't have oceans, but we have lakes and swimming pools. One of my old photos shows a young, pregnant woman putting clothes on a small tow-headed girl. Another little brown-haired girl is behind them playing in a wading pool. There I was, big as a cow, laughing into the camera as I dressed her. She has Daddy's big hat on her head. Memory brings the scene to life for me. The temperature had broken records that hot summer and my two little girls were playing in the yard as I fixed supper.

Their father came home from work, "Why is Linda out in the yard without any clothes on?" he asked.

"She what?" I hollered and ran out the door. Except for Daddy's hat, Linda was dressed only in her birthday suit. "Why did you put your hat on her?" I asked.

"Well, she had to have something on," he explained.

I grabbed the clothes she had flung on the ground and he snapped a picture of me putting them back on her.

As the pages of the years turned, more pictures of swimming pools filled my photo albums. Wading pools got bigger and one year as we took a family vote we decided to get a swimming pool instead of going on vacation. We exchanged our wading pools for a full size pool. When we put a plastic bubble over the pool we could enjoy swimming in the wintertime too. Gas was cheap in those days and many happy photo album type of days were spent swimming.

People are still having fun in that pool out by Brighton. At times I like to drive by the old home place in the country. Towels are hanging close by and the people who live there now are diving into the pool or sitting in lawn chairs.

When my grandson Billy was about three years old he must have thought that since we went swimming at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the winter he could swim in February. One day his mother looked out the window and there was Billy, dressed only in his shirt, putting water in his wading pool. By the time she ran out there he had taken off his shirt and was standing in his birthday suit. She let him know that February wasn't a good time to go swimming. Swimming in the summer time is great, skinny dipping in frost water in February is not so good. She didn't take a photo of that, but my imagination formed a mental picture so I could store it in my album of memories.