By ADAM STEWART

Staff writer

As Christmas break from school continued Friday, 6-year-old Hannah May was running out of things to do and wanted to see her friends.

“A week is quite a while off from school,” her mother, teacher Missy Stubenhofer of rural Marion, said. “We live out in the country, too, so you can’t just go outside and see four or five friends come over.”

Stubenhofer’s solution was to take Hannah and a friend to USD 408 Sports and Aquatic Center in Marion to swim. The decision got Hannah’s seal of approval.

“I like to play with friends in the water because we can dive and jump in,” Hannah said. “I love playing on the slide.”

She said she would like to swim more often than she does, and Stubenhofer said Hannah had a good point.

“This is really nice,” Stubenhofer said. “We don’t take advantage of it as much as we should.”

She said there aren’t many other ways to entertain a child for an afternoon for $2, the pool’s entry fee.

They weren’t the only family spending a cold winter day swimming. Krista Priest of Hillsboro went swimming with children Gavin, Macy, and Jaden. She said they swim together about once a week.

“I want to swim every day,” 4-year-old Gavin said, with emphasis on “every.”

During the winter, the children aren’t eager to play outdoors, so swimming indoors is a good activity, Priest said.

“It’s better than sitting around all day watching TV,” she said.

Manager Greta Smith was happy to see families using the pool during the Christmas break.

“It’s been nice this week because we’ve had more families come in,” she said.

Most of the winter, though, the pool is overlooked as a family activity, she said. People have commented to her that there is something wrong with swimming in winter, but she doesn’t agree with that argument.

“It’s not only a summertime thing,” she said.