HONEY! WAKE UP! I NEED YOUR HELP! MY CAR WAS JUST ON FIRE! That's how my day started at 5:30 this morning. As I go from zero to 1000 in 5 seconds, I'm thinking to myself, "Oh no. We can't afford a new car now!" When I got outside...in my nightgown and sandals, I disovered that the fire was in the backseat of Doug's 1994 Ford Escort. "Whew it was just the backseat...we don't have to buy a new car." So the best we can tell, here's what we think happened: Doug had serviced one of his customers early Saturday morning by exchanging some floor mats. For some reason it had to get done on Saturday. These are those big black rugs you see as you walk into restaurants and stores. So he had 2 big rugs rolled up and folded in half in the back seat of his car on Saturday. We rolled up the windows b/c there was a threat of thunderstorms. The windows stayed rolled up all Sunday as well. In the close to 100 heat. So when he went out to his car around 5:15 this morning, the windows were cloudy and he couldn't understand why. Then he opened the door and was overwhelmed with smoke and then saw the flames in the backseat... Now 5:30 and WIDE AWAKE, we are outside with the hose saturating the car and rugs in the driveway ashes and globs of melted rubber. You can't imagine the smell... I still havent' gotten it out of my nose or hands... That's my Monday.

You know it's HOT when.... Your central air thermostat is set at 81...and it's refreshing when coming in from the yard. It's still 90 outside at 11pm. The ground is so dry that there are huge cracks in the dirt. When you water your drought-resistant plants and the water runs because the ground is too dry to soak it all up. You have to put a cooler in your trunk just for your frozen/refrigerated items you buy at the grocery store...for the trip home. The birds are flocking to the drip pan under the outdoor faucet for water...when the kids are just 2 feet away splashing in the pool. When Texas summer is like NY winter...you're cooped up inside. So how do we cope with it all? We go to VBS at our church, with the church thermostats set at 73. (There were 424 kids registered for VBS last week!) We play outside starting around 8 am and go in for lunch, then swim and hang out inside (mostly) until dinner time. Many nights, we're swimming in our pool at 8pm to cool off. I'm glad we brought our intex pool with us from New York!!!

One of my new favorite picturesof the boys! Baseball season is finally over. In one week, we had 6 games (between Erik and Ellie), 3 ballet classes, an AWANA awards ceremony, a dress rehearsal for dance recital, and 2 dance recital performances! During that week, Ellie had a chance to play catcher for her tball team. When her coach told her what position she'd be playing for the game, she exclaimed, "Catcher?! I finally made it to catcher?! I never thought I'd make it to catcher!!" Then we spent the next week recovering. This week has been full of preparations for VBS which starts Monday morning at 8am! We're expecting close to 400 kids!!!