July 18, 2012

Outside Temp: 66 F (we had a high of 97 today, totally ugh.  We managed to keep the house in the mid 80's but it still was annoying.)
What I cooked today:
Chinese Chicken: I must really love my family, because I managed to make both chicken and fried rice for dinner.  The phrase 'slaving over a hot stove' came to mind.  I'm going to break down and get a BBQ. 

Update:
I really hate the heat.  Just in case I hadn't mentioned that before.

To try to help keep the house a little cooler, Patrick rigged up a 'swamp cooler'.  He took our box fan, attached some filter material to the front.  Set the bottom of the filter material in a boot tray and poured water over the filter material.  With the fan going, it would blow through the water and the air would be a little cooler.  It did drop the house temperature by a few degrees, so I couldn't complain. 

Of course, the boot tray had a hole in it, which means that when the water drained down the filter into the boot tray, it then drained onto the floor.  But, we figured it out after about 15 minutes, when the water seemed to mysteriously disappear. 

Once the temperature cooled off a little, we dismantled out 'swamp cooler', because we needed the box fan for the window.  I'm expecting to rebuild it tomorrow.  This heat wave is expected to last a few days, at least!

This evening, we took the kids over to Stanford to go swimming.  It seems a little silly to drive 30 minutes over to Stanford, when the Belt pool is only 15 minutes away, but the Stanford pool has a diving board, and those are just plain cool.  We only stayed for about an hour (ish), but the kids had a great time.  Connor and Katie are getting comfortable in the deep end, and, although their swimming skills are not stellar, they can hold their own in the 10ft deep section.

They are all diving off the board, although Katie still needs to learn to dive, like hands first, instead of jump, feet first.  She did a few great belly flops today, but by the end, she was almost there.  Even Ryan wanted to jump off the diving board.  He had a floaty ring, and, with me treading water below the board, he just jumped right off.  The kid has no fear.

Once we got home, I realized that I had forgotten to take Ryan to summer school today.  Oh my goodness!  Apparently, when we set up Wednesday and Friday for summer school, I had forgotten to put it on my calendar.  And if the calendar doesn't remind me, I'm lost.  So, I'll call his teacher tomorrow and apologize profusely.  Hopefully, she will still let me bring him in on Friday, if I promise not to forget!