DICKSON FAMILY: It's a hot one

Thursday, July 21, 2011

It's a hot one

The "feels-like" temperature today was 116. That's what it said on weather.com at least. I told Sam I was going to take their word for it. We didn't crack the door today--not even to go get the mail. Yesterday we weren't as smart.

Right about 3:00 (which I discovered later was the absolute peak of the day at about "feels-like" 110) we headed outside with scooters and stroller only to be greeted by oven-like heat. It hasn't been too hot this whole summer and we really hadn't been outside at all so we had no idea what kind of weather awaited us. At that point though it was too late to turn back on the plan we had talked about all day, although I couldn't imagine that we looked anything but ridiculous trudging up the deserted hill of our neighborhood in the blazing heat. The kids were insistent so I persisted. Thankfully the park is truly just around the block otherwise I'm not sure we would have made it. When we did arrive we were all dripping and Max was begging for water (we didn't bring any, what were we thinking?). Ruby and I plopped down in the shade, while the boys attempted to play ninjas for approximately 30 seconds before they too joined us in the shade. At that point Reed made some wonderful analogy about how the sun was like sin and the earth is like people and how the sun tries to go after the people in the shade more than the others. It almost made sense. Clearly the heat was on his mind and maybe even starting to get to him.

It didn't take more than a couple minutes for everyone to have had enough. We raced home using the shortcut and made it home before we all melted. I don't think walking through the door ever felt so good.

Reed was pretty excited that he had frozen a water bottle earlier, until he realized it wasn't going to do much to quench his thirst immediately. "Take a picture of me with the frozen water." I think my kids are starting to get used to my picture taking habits.

Ruby was pretty happy to get some water in her too, however she wasn't asking for a photo op.

This is the face Ruby gives when I tell her to smile. I think I'll stick to catching her off guard for now.

Max almost seemed traumatized by the excessive heat. "I never want to go outside again", he said.

Instead of playing at the park we stayed cool inside and played with our new Jenga blocks. Real Jenga is not ideal for playing when Ruby is around so the boys came up with a game called "Trees". They try to set up as many trees (blocks) as possible while Ruby tries to knock them down as fast as possible. I thought it was just a simple little game until Reed said, "Hurry, try to get 5 trees up so you get to move to the next level with unbeatable trees."

Max setting up.