Congrats

Congratulations are in order for one of my cousins. She was recently chosen (as one of a very, very, very small group) to be a part of the Executive Training Program for her company!

From what I understand, her boss and her boss's boss nominated her without her knowledge. She found out yesterday, and is thrilled. How awesome to have bosses that believe in you, want you to succeed, and are willing to put themselves out to offer you that opportunity. And how fantastic that she has found a job she is so good at that everyone recognizes her potential for great things.

K has worked her tail off for this, and she deserves it. Congratulations Cuz!! You rock!!

Rain!

We woke up this morning to a sound we haven't heard in a long time...rain! It rained a few drops in June, but our last significant rainfall was in May.

The most common misconception about Seattle is that it rains all the time. We have a ton of cloudy days, but all in all our summers are dry, cloud free and amazing.

Kendra is One Bullet Tall

This weekend was the conclusion of the summer-long festival known as Seafair. Yesterday we headed down to the pier to look at some ships that were in dock and on display. There were two missile guided destroyers, a Coast Guard Interceptor, and two Canadian destroyers. We took a tour of the USS Shoup, a destroyer based out of Everett. It was pretty awesome to see. Yes, that is a large caliber bullet Kendra is next to.

Today we decided to go check out the Blue Angels airshow over Lake Washington. We walked from our house to I-90, along with several thousand other people. WDOT shuts down the interstate for 2 hours, and everyone walks out on it to watch the show. It's amazing to stand on a floating bridge, over a lake and get buzzed by planes. It was sunny and hot, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Click here for pictures of what we saw.

We invited a few friends over for dinner, and are now playing with our new Wii Motion additions to our Wii. (Yes, they are as awesome as advertised.)

Broken Records

We blew by the old heat record of 100 degrees, set in 1941 and 1994. It is currently 102.

Ugh. Even with my little AC unit it's 85 in the house. I can't imagine what it would be otherwise.

Anyone want to FedEx overnight a few air conditioners? We could probably make a killing on them.

It's Hot

It's official...we're miserably hot. Today is forcast to break Seattle's all time high, and records go back to 1891. Yesterdays low was the highest one on record as well, so even our (usually) blessed cool evenings are gone.

I did buy a room air conditioner, but it can only do so much in our fairly large downstairs. We're surviving, but geeze, this sucks.

More Jelly

So today's adventures in canning included making three batches of jelly - blueberry conserves, cherry marmalade and blackberry. There is nothing like standing over a huge pot of 225 degree jelly for 3 hours on a day that was close to 100 degrees on its own. Did I mention the baby that wanted to be held continuously as I did all this? And the fact that I managed to lock myself, and Kendra, on the back deck and had to be rescued by the neighbor?

It was a crazy evening.

(I did end up with 20 jars of incredibly yummy jelly, though!)

First Steps!

Kendra took her first unprompted, unassisted steps this morning! She's taken one or two steps here or there between us, but this was the first time she did it without any encouragement from us. She had worked her way down the wall, and when she got to Dan she let go and took two, maybe three, steps to him.

Of course, she seems completely oblivious to what she's done, but how exciting!