Quick 5

Notice the 93.2 degrees.  That is the temperature inside, not outside, our house on Monday.

I suppose summer is here to stay, so we might as well suck it up and get used to it.  Here are the things I do to keep my family cool:

1.  I give myself a huge pep talk: my sister's house doesn't even have air conditioning, so why I am so cranky that mine is broken?  Her family survives just fine.  And this is Colorado, not the midwest.  It WILL get below 70 degrees each night and the air is dry, so I can rest assured that once the sun goes down it WILL get cooler.  I need to learn to harness the power of the night coolness.

*Side note: there is someone coming to fix the A/C on Monday.  We're now trying to decide how much to use it, though, since we are functioning okay without it.  Do we turn it on only on days the temp goes over 95?  Do we turn it on only at 4:00pm when I'm getting ready to cook dinner in our hot, West-facing kitchen?  Do we set it to come on only if the temp inside reaches 85 degrees?  This luxury is a huge responsibility.

2.  Each night I give the girls a cool bath.  They love playing in the water, and I stick my feet in and let them wash my legs.  For some reason that is great fun for them. 

3.  I think about our trip to Alaska that we're taking in a few weeks.  Lee's best buddy, and the best man from our wedding, Joe is getting married.  He moved up there a few years ago and his bride was born and raised there.  And we get to go to the wedding.  Just me and Lee, sans kids.  I've been doing a little research and the average temperature in Alaska in the middle of July is 65 degrees.  It will be a wonderful respite from this heat.

4.  Each night before I go to bed, I wash my feet in cold water.  I remember my mom telling us to do this during the summers when I was younger and our house didn't have A/C.  It was probably to wash all the summer dirt off our feet so we didn't get our sheets so dirty, but I love the way it cools me down before I go to sleep.

5.  I'm thumbing my nose at all the anti-sugar articles that abound today and giving my girls popsicles for snack every day.  And Joya seems to think this is a nice way to cool down:

Can you also see the peanut butter Hitler moustache?

I do keep the grapes in the fridge, so they are nice and cool.  I suppose in theory putting them directly on your body might be a way to cool down.  (This was completely unprompted, by the way.  I just looked over at her and there she was, grape on the forehead.)

It's going to be a long summer, folks.  Lord, send rain.

Quick 5

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America 

  

1.  All of our plumbing issues have been resolved.  Thanks to the awesome help from a friend at church, we were able to bypass the problem on our own, for just about $30 in materials.  That's about $5130 less than what the other guys said it would take to fix it.  We even got the blessing from a real live plumber, so we're pretty confident in how it all works.  AND Lee figured out our dishwasher problems, so we have full use of that too.  Hopefully it will be a long while before I take a fully functioning kitchen for granted again.

2.  There *might* be something wrong with our A/C.  Which always feels a little selfish to say, since there are millions of people without the luxury of A/C, but it's true.  We've been breaking down and turning it on during these many days of 90+ degree weather, but even with it running the temp inside our house climbs to at least 86 degrees.  We've made use of fans and that helps, but just the knowledge that the A/C isn't working properly causes me to struggle to find things to be thankful for in the midst of sweaty days.

3.  At least hot days are good for Popsicles.

 

4.  Every day, as soon as I clean Alaina up from lunch, I tell her to go use the bathroom.  So she troops on in there, and Joya falls in line right behind her.  Amazingly enough, Alaina invites Joya in while she takes care of things.  At all other times of the day, Alaina closes the door for "privacy" and Joya howls outside of it until Alaina comes out.  But after lunch, Joya is allowed in.  Alaina closes the door and then the girls spend a good five minutes shrieking and laughing.  It's one of my favorite sister moments.

5.  It's VBS week for us.  Our church makes it family style, which means it's held from 6:00 to 8:30 at night, and families participate together, including the parents.  Lee and I switched off taking Alaina, since Joya didn't need to stay out until 9:00 every night when she's usually in bed by 6:45.  But it's been fun.  Our church does an amazing job with everything, and it's so fun to witness.  I look forward to the day when our whole family truly can participate together, when there aren't very tiny children that need to go to bed.  It's been a late night for Alaina every night too, but she can handle it a bit better than Joya could.  Just a bit, though.  By the end of the week, the signs of little sleep were obvious.  It was worth it.

Quick 5...Or Catching Up

1. We moved.

2.  Settling in is going okay.  Aside from the kitchen pipe line being broken and us having to do dishes in the bathroom like hillbillies.  We got a heart-stopping, terrible quote from RotoRooter, and I call them out by name to say that we had another plumber from church come in and take a look and verify that RotoRooter will, in fact, WAY overcharge every time.  This plumber agreed that we could easily bypass the problem and for no good reason needed to pay RotoRooter what they quoted us.  This issue should be resolved soon.

3.  I'm sure every homeowner can attest to this, but we now have so many projects we want to do that it is hard to know where to begin.  We don't have the money or time to do everything at once, so it's a little overwhelming to know which one to pick first.  I suppose it doesn't matter; we should just pick the one that we do have the time and money for today. 

4.  Alaina turned 4 in a very low-key fashion.  It was never my dream to move on her birthday, but that is the way it worked out.  Thankfully she's only 4, and we could get away with it this time.  We celebrated with a family party the Sunday before we moved, and on her actual birthday Grammy whisked her and her sister away from the moving chaos for the day.  Grammy is her "best lady" so she loved it.  Our lovely friend Christina made her a birthday cake so that I wouldn't have to think about it during the move.  She did an amazing job, and I will probably be hitting her up for Joya's birthday in October.

Family party at Grammy and Grandad's

Lovely birthday cake by the fabulous Christina

 5.  I suppose other things have been going on too.  But they're not as big as the move and the birthday, so I'll have to let them slide into distant memories.  In their place, here are random pictures from recent weeks:

Naomi and Joya in Naomi's new sleeping mat

Our little Stephanie

This might be one of my all-time favorite pictures.  Joya is going to love this when she gets older.

Blowing bubbles in our new backyard

Sisters

 That's all folks.  Happy to be getting back to normal life things.