Late Night By The Pool

Just got back in from swimming and just sitting by the pool afterward watching the tiki torches burn and the light fountain streaming colorful lights on the water. It's our second late night out by the pool this season but we've never stayed out this late before. We were all swimming until night fell. (For me swimming is so much enjoyable when the sun is hidden behind the clouds with the temperature as warm as it was today.) Then I changed to dry clothes and put Tommy to bed and later went back out with Tom and the older boys to sit by the pool. Tom popped a few firecrackers which the boys enjoyed. The mosquitoes were particularly bad (the boys had a contest of who had the most mosquito bites--yikes!) but after a douse of Off!, they quit bothering us, leaving us to enjoy this sultry summer evening.
I told the boys of how we dealt with mosquitoes in the Philippines: how we would burn the leaves and small branches of a tree called "ipil-ipil" in the afternoons to ward off the mosquitoes and how I think the mosquito repellent coils are made from the same tree; how we burned those coils every night, like the one we burned tonight (Lion-Tiger, mosquito killer--is a popular brand that I remember); how sometimes we would spread vegetable oil on a plate and wait for the mosquitoes to swarm over our heads and just swat them with the oiled plate and how the mosquitoes would stick to that plate and die (then Tom added, "and they eat it" for effect. Both boys went "Ewww"); and how we slept inside mosquito nets for which Tom remarked at how uncomfortable and hot it was to sleep in because he had experienced it when he went to the Philippines.
My mosquito story-telling was cut short by raindrops. So the boys quickly gathered their things to take in the house while Tom and I covered the pool and blew out the citronella candles, mosquito coils and the tiki torches. Ah, what a lovely evening it was! Everyone should sleep good tonight.