Lauren's 3rd Birthday Party!

Lauren had her birthday party at the Children's Museum this year. Elizabeth always has the funnest (even though that's not a real word) parties!
The girls had a blast.

Heidi (waving in the back and the tallest below) is the cutest babysitter ever. She came to help and celebrate and made it so much fun for the kids. Look how orderly she kept the kids in line when we moved from one area to another! She got lots of compliments from other parents. She is one of my cute young women and I think she is just awesome!

One funny memory for adults only... During a story time, the girls climbed up in a pretend tree to "listen". I'm not sure why, but there was a wooden stick up in the tree and they could poke the stick through wooden holes in the tree. Natalie was poking her head through one larger hole and then stuck the stick way out at about crotch level and was waving it around. Obviously, not having any clue what this might look like to two "older" ladies like me and Angie - my good friend who was at the party too. We were stifling our giggles like we were in Jr. High again. Pretty funny.

Elizabeth always spoils the kids with tons of food and treats and fun decorations. They were a happy bunch!

After the party, I stayed with my girls and we played all afternoon. We spent about an hour and a half or maybe more in the clay room making creations! We even had them baked so they can be on permanent. Unfortunately, my camera battery died so I'll have to take pictures of our creations and add them later. (o: Thanks for a wonderful day Elizabeth!

Summer Heat Wave

This summer we broke a record! A record for the longest streak of days over 90's degrees in the Portland area. Several of those days - 4 or 5, I believe, were over 100 degrees! In fact, on the second hottest day at 105 degrees, we were actually hotter here than Afghanistan, Florida and Mexico! Crazy! The next day was even hotter at 106 and almost broke a record for the hottest day ever here. (That record was 107) It was HOT and we are not used to this kind of heat! It would even stay in the 90's clear until 10:00 p.m. We got a taste of life in Arizona, which was fun for a few days, but NO THANKS! Thank heavens for AC. That's the problem though, there are a LOT of people out here who don't have AC. It's not really considered a necessity - unless you're wimpy like we are. But on those days, people waited in horrendous lines to get fans and window ACs. Hal* knows several people at work who checked into hotels to get some relief from the heat. The hotels were very nice and gave huge discounts to locals who wanted to escape.
I love this picture. This was as we walked out of a nice cool movie theater into the blast of 103 degree heat! You can see the misery in the girls faces. They were not up for a picture, but it was a moment to remember.

These pictures are from Angela's birthday at the local water fountains. Hal* and I only lasted for about 15 minutes before we decided to go get our suits on too and get in the big pool down the street. It was HOT!

The free movie on the Wednesday of the hottest week ever was especially busy because it was an escape from the heat! We loved seeing Madagascar 2 for the first time! It was hilarious AND nice and cool!

On the hottest day - 106 degrees - our power suddenly went off around 6:00 p.m. as I was making dinner. I was more worried about us boiling to death than getting the pot of water for the spaghetti boiling for dinner. I called my friend who lives behind us. Her power was still on! I went outside and heard our next door neighbor's AC running. I thought maybe we blew a fuse and checked into it. Nope - it wasn't a fuse. I walked over to two more neighbors and found out that we had a very localized problem. We called PGE and found out that just 10 unlucky houses that were connected to one transformer were the ones without power. On this particular day, these PGE guys were our heroes. It made me think of Higgly Town Heroes (the kid's cartoon). Well, these guys were heroes to me on that HOT day! It was cool watching them use the huge crane thing-a-majig to replace the broken transformer. I even clapped for them when the new transformer was put in. Thank heavens for electricity. Our power was only off for two hours, but in that heat - two hours was a long time! It didn't take long for the house to heat up.