Big Girl

Notice the TV? That's a key part of this french braid equation.

Quake-icane-ageddon

Pennsylvania has been experiencing some rather unusual weather. I don't have any pictures of the earthquake, well, because NOTHING HAPPENED! I thought a truck was out front making the windows rumble and I didn't think another thought about it until Tim called to say that his co-workers were all panicking.

They had been warning us about the hurricane for a week or so, but Tim had an excellent adventure planned in Nevada with his friends and brother and we thought it would all blow over so he didn't cancel the trip. Things actually threatened to get much more serious here and he feels bad that he abandoned us during a natural disaster, but it's nothing that a pedicure and a new stuffed animal can't fix. So here's how we rode out the storm:

We made a lasagna, bought a bag of apples, locked up the house and went 4 blocks to Ashley, Tommy, Poppy and Mersey's house to get cozy and hope that the two toddlers would mostly keep each other busy. Playing with Poppy's train set was a real hit:



Oly and I slept on a blow up bed in the living room. When I say "sleep" I mostly mean that she giggled with excitement, refused to close her eyes and said, "Mommy, are you sleeping? Do you want me to rub your back? It's morning time!!!! (at 2 am)". The power went out, the basement flooded and the wind was noisy, but other than the tornado warnings everything felt like a fairly run-of-the-mill scary summer storm.



Here's Tommy being warned to NOT wake Oly up the next morning.



Spoiler alert: he did.



We went out to survey the damage:



Here's the Media Grounds Crew's new recruits:



It's possible that they touched every single stick within a 4 block radius.













We walked to the playground at the elementary school to splash in this "serious puddle."



And swing in the fierce wind.



Then after nap we watched....



The PECO guy come and cut some branches that knocked down power lines:



Fun for all ages. The entire neighborhood watched, because, well, what else was there to do?



Power in our county was mostly restored as of yesterday afternoon so we said goodbye to the Duttons and came home to check out our house. There's a small tree down in the back yard, but our tomatoes were in good shape. Some of the basil blew over, except that now that I think about it they might have been that way before the storm.



Piece of cake! I shouldn't make light of it because a lot of New Jersey and Delaware are in bad shape- hopefully the beaches recover. But today is the most beautiful weather I have ever seen and I swear our flower garden looks happier than ever.

Jumping

I forgot to post these a few weeks ago when it happened, but here it finally is!

Oly and I were at the mall killing time out of the heat and she saw one of these jumpy things set up (is there any other way to describe it? Does it have an official name?) and since Ashley took her to one in North Carolina she knew that she would die unless she was strapped in immediately.




These are terrible cell phone shots but she squealed with delight the entire time and went EXTREMELY high. She was up to the second level of the mall!



(I'm sorry that I can't flip the video)

Kitty Faces

We were just chilling in the car today waiting for Papa to run an errand at the bank and I thought I'd take some feelings faces for old times sake. Notice how I purchased a more weather appropriate kitty costume?



Here's sad:



Mad (you can't hear the growling):



Happy!:



Silly:



Surprised:

Jumper and Boots

Kitties and Puzzles

Speaking of it being too hot for animal costumes in August (as Auntie Margie and I were doing in the comment thread in the last post) we got a fantastic hand-me-down of a white kitty outfit that Oly has barely taken off since she received it on Wednesday.



Her best friend Tommy's grandmother is a preschool teacher down the street at the Quaker Friends School and as she was cleaning out her classroom to get ready for this school year she found a few things she thought Oly would like. She was right. Puzzles and Kitties! Her favorites! But it really is rather hot for padded fur.



And here a couple cuties from when she managed to snag the camera for some self-photos.

Papa's Back!

And this little raccoon couldn't be happier.

Garden Photos Rescued!

Sears sent our broken camera back. Good news. Parts of it technically still work! It's basically now an old school camera: I can take photos with it, but can't see what I've taken on the screen, and can't change any of the fancy settings.

Here are some of the photos that were on the memory card before we sent it out for repair:

Zuchini and Tomato tart before baking, Oly prepared the tiny one.



Baked!



This photo is a sham, she cut it up but didn't eat one bite.



Some garden update photos:







Those are tomatoes in the back left corner, and a tomatillo on the right, trying to take over Delaware County.



Here's the garden at Rose Tree Park:



Oly chowing down on the cherry tomatoes.

All Tatted Up in the Tub

That's a fierce flying dragon on her belly, fyi.

(Picture taken with fancy app on my cell phone)

Java and Oly

Our regular babysitter, Jennifer, lives two blocks away and has a few cats and dogs. When she babysits they always walk over to her house to visit her creatures. Well she just got a new kitten named Java and guess who came over to help watch Oly while I went to a movie with a friend?



It looks like that kitten may have gotten her first taste of cheerios as well. This morning when Oly woke up she said, "Java Kitty came over to play with me. I held her tooooooooooo tight!"

Ice Cream

Eye infection + ear infection + Papa away for another week = Rainbow Sherbet ice cream cone for sad Oly girl.