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First, my friend Jill and her daughter Annie invited us to an open gym session at Annie's gymnastics studio. It was air conditioned, so Jill and I enjoyed chatting, playing with the kids and staying cool.
Annie and Molly were the only kids there, so they had a fantastic time playing on all of the different gymnastics apparatus. Molly especially liked the trapeze, which sailed her out over a big foam pit:
She flies through the air with greatest of ease.....
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Well, maybe not with that much ease...
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luckily there was a soft landing!
She also loved the uneven parallel bars. She has experience on these from her own Little Gym class, so she is an expert at mounting the bars with a flying leap:
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And then performing the always difficult Hang Until You Drop maneuver.
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Later in the week, we met up with Faye and Alex at the splash park. Molly had a fun in the water:
But for some reason both girls were more excited to play at the park, despite the soaring temperatures.
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"Hey, I am stinkin' hot!" (And from the sweat that she had worked up, stinky is a kind description!)
Monkey see...
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Monkey do!
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Keeping hydrated is key to playground safety:
While we were in the middle of this heat wave, we watched weather reports of a large storm out in the Atlantic. Ike was heading for the U.S. coastline. It was fascinating to watch the hurricane form and we desperately hoped that the people of Texas headed the warning to get out of Ike's way, but to us the storm was little more than an interesting news story.
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Little did we know that a few days later, the storm would impact us, the poor Midwesterners living out here amongst the corn and soybeans. It really wasn't much of a storm, as far as severe weather goes, but we did get some pretty strong winds (nothing like we used to get in Colorado, though!).
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This storm managed to shut down a good portion of our state. With all of the downed electrical lines we lost out power on Sunday afternoon. I assumed it would only last a few hours, so I laced up my shoes and went for a run. When I returned, still no power. Hmmmmm. As it turned out it would be DAYS, not hours, before power was restored to our house. Amazing.
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Something I learned in the past few days: You can get a whole lot more accomplished without power than with it. There was no internet, no television, and driving anywhere was difficult due to the fact that so many traffic signals were out. We were forced to stay at home and find things to occupy our time. I organized the Tupperware cabinet, got the yard cleaned up and best of all, I cleaned the refrigerator. This was the highlight of my week. Really.
In the 8 1/2 years that we have lived in this house I have never had a totally empty refrigerator. The refrigerator typically got spot cleaned. You know, clear a shelf, wipe it off; sop up a spill; reorganize the contents. But now, since the contents of the fridge was in the trash (no power=no appliances), I had the opportunity to really clean it. I scrubbed it down like there was no tomorrow. It sparkled, baby. It was so pretty that when the power came back on, I almost hated to refill it. Yes, I know, I need to get a life.
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With the return of electricity, life is now getting back to normal, and I am getting nothing accomplished. But I can't resist sneaking in just a few more pictures of my beautiful Molly. After all, 10 pictures in one post, just isn't enough, is it?
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These were taken the day after the storm, during the big clean up. While I sawed fallen tree limbs and raked piles of leaves and debris, Molly has a great time playing in the yard:
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Holy cow, what a mess!
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I'll stay here, while you clean up Mom!
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Maybe, I'll do a little strawberry picking.
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This little guy looks tired.
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He needs to take a nap!
(Molly told me that the little strawberries were tired and need to take a nap. She made a bed for them and covered them with leaves. It was totally cute, but when is she going to be old enough to help me rake leaves?)
