By Brian Eckard
I guess about a week ago we past the midway point of my boys' visit. We have just about three weeks and a couple of days to go before they will make their way back to the east coast for another school year. And, with their departure the summer will be rapidly moving towards being over.
This past weekend it has been unusually hot here in Washington. Normally it might get warm but in the evenings it cools off enough that it is quite comfortable to sleep. Over the weekend it never really cooled down. As soon as our apartment started to feel comfortable, the sun would rise and start to warm up the place again. We're on the second floor, so you can add to this cycle the fact that hot air rises. So we also get the heat from the downstairs apartments. You can literally feel the temperature difference as you climb the stairs!
On Friday it had become hot enough that we decided to re-inflate the wading pool we bought for the boys to use. They spent all of Friday afternoon splashing around and playing with the sprinkler feature on the pool. The cool water felt good and it helped them to stay somewhat comfortable. Friday evening was hot in the apartment. It finally cooled off early Saturday morning--just in time to be reheated by the morning sun. On Saturday, it was more of the same. We started the morning with a treat. We took the kids over to McDonalds for breakfast. After that we did our shopping errands over at Walmart, and we also attempted to look at portable air conditioners. Unfortunately, everyone in Washington seems to have bought an air conditioner this weekend because all of the stores are out of stock! They spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon playing in their pool and coming in to see if they could watch movies on TV. I was doing some train simming so I hogged the TV for most of Saturday afternoon.
Saturday evening was just as hot in the apartment as Friday was. Once again the place cooled off just in time for the sun to heat things up again. Sunday morning we had black berry pancakes for breakfast. Mmm.. Afterwards we took the boys to get their hair cut. After the haircuts we took them to a park that is across the street where they spent some time climbing and playing on the play equipment.