Ahhhh... relief at last!

Our week-long stretch of dangerously high temperatures finally broke yesterday. After a week of breaking a sweat just going from the house to the car, I came out yesterday morning to find the weather... pleasant?! We had experienced severe storms all week long - none providing any relief from the high humidity and temps. Then more pleasant weather just snuck in. I'm definitely not complaining, though it is a bit funny to find 90 degree weather cool. After several days with the heat index around 115F(46C), 90 should feel cool. Just like 10 degrees F (-12C) feels warm after a bitter sub-zero stretch in January/February.

It has been a challenge keeping the Doodles entertained. We've visited every cool place we can think of where they can run. We've swam until our fingers have permanent puckers. After one of the storms, the boys discovered a new way to keep cool...

We had moved their sandbox a week before. It seems its old location was perfect for a little mud-pie-making. The boys had a ball. This time, though, mom didn't join in!

We also had a little excitement this week. One of the storms that rolled through was particularly scary looking. The clouds were super dark and were moving in three different directions - some swirling. Of course, we had a couple places we had to go (getting my car to the mechanic after the climate control went out - perfect week for that to happen!), so were out getting lunch when the storm rolled in.

After the initial storm blew through and the storm seemed to calm down to just rain, I ran the boys out to the car to finish the errands. As I got the first boy in the van, something hit the ground next to me and shattered! Hail? I looked around and didn't see anything else, so kept loading. By the time I had all three buckled in the van, the skies let loose with golfball-sized hail. They would hit the car and shattered. Wow, was that loud! I could see the back edge of the storm, so we headed north and within just a couple blocks, were able to get out of the hail.

When I looked back to check on the boys, there were three very large sets of eyes looking back at me. I couldn't help but chuckle. That's my first experience with hail that big. I'd be happy to let that record stand for a very long time!

After running all our errands, the boys were excited to find some hail stones still sitting in the grass in our yard.

It makes me wonder just how big those hail stones were when they fell, as they had at least 45 minutes to melt before we made it home.

Doodle quote of the day - "Mom, I love you like a big sausage... the biggest sausage in the whole wide world". Makes me wonder where he heard this recently. To my knowledge, he doesn't like sausage...