Hot summer!

At the Children's Zoo with our favorite multiples club twin friends, Hannah and Haylea Dean.

In a giant dinosaur egg. They called it their "egg-ship" and pretended to go into outer space.

Will and Xander playing "storytime" in Grace's room. They were both reading out loud to the animals at the same time.

Grace inside on a hot day.

Reading books. This seems to be the one activity they do the most everyday.

So, we've been just laying low, not too busy, trying to beat the heat. Things with the school year are starting. The kids had an hour visitation at preschool on Tuesday the 5th. They just spent a little time playing, visiting with their teachers and making a t-shirt that they're supposed to wear on all their field trips, which I gather are numerous this year. They had fun and are excited for preschool to actually begin, which it does on Wed. the 18th. We go to Open House tomorrow (Saturday) to get all the paperwork in order, then off they go!

We have been swimming several times. We went to a Pool party at Star City Shores last Saturday for all the kids who finished the summer reading program at the library. We were shocked at how many people were there (1000+), but the kids still had fun, anyway. We also went swimming at Firethorn, the Y, a friend of Ellen's backyard and Aunt Lisa's backyard. We are constantly pleasantly surprised at how well the kids are swimming. We've decided to enroll them in one more round of swimming lessons starting in September, so hopefully they will pass this level and can be in the next level next summer. They are very close to passing and will all the practicing they've been doing lately, I think they'll be just fine!

We've had a couple of unfortunate events around here lately. Two weeks ago, we had a REALLY bad smell in our basement and discovered a dead mouse next to the computer (that was making it hot and circulating the smell). It was gross and I panicked, setting out tons of sticky traps with peanut butter on them. But to my relief, we've caught nothing and we've had no more evidence of mice in the basement. We also discovered a wasp's nest on the swingset. Brian warned me about it, but I forgot and sent the kids out to play. Well, Grace got stung. I felt so bad. Brian sprayed it and go rid of it, but she had a pretty big welt on her arm that is still not totally gone. It was little scary when she got stung, because she'd never been before, and you just never know if they're going to be allergic and have a reaction. Luckily she had none, and handled it better than I might have predicted. Our final unfortunate event was that our air conditioner went out on Monday night. By the time we woke up Tuesday morning, we were roasting. I called a company at 7 am and they promised to come that day. Tuesday was the day I took the kids to preschool, so we roasted in the house until 9:30 when I couldn't stand it anymore and I took them early to preschool. After that, we went to my mom's for lunch/nap. They fixed it around noon (only the capacitor was broken. And FYI, a capacitor is actually a real thing, come to find out from Brian. I just thought they invented that word for the "Back to the Future" movie, you know "flux capacitor.") It was a simple, quick fix, but the house was hot the rest of the day. It just couldn't cool down our west facing house on a 98 degree day. Luckily, we've been fine the rest of the week. Thank goodness for the quick working people at Capitol Heating and Cooling!

So that's about all for now. I guess I'll have first day of school pictures to post next week. Stay cool!