Tales from the Carpool Lane

Last week, Grace was in fine arts camp at our church, and so of course on Friday night they had their little performance of the musical they had been working on. It went really well, and I have to say that my baby carried the whole show. She was the best one. Here's a photo of her in action:She really was indispensable, let me tell you. And how do you like that crackerjack photography of mine? It was tough to pull off such an awesome photo considering I had to sit half a mile away and try to squeeze off shots with a whiny four-year-old climbing all over me. The blurriness was totally intentional, you know, to keep from posting the identities of minors on the internet and what-not.

In all seriousness, she really did have a good time and did a wonderful job. After the performance, we went to an after-party in the parking lot that consisted of about seven bounce house water slides. That was a lot of fun for the kids. Not too much fun for me trying to keep track of their whereabouts by myself in a crowd. I left with as many children as I came with, so I suppose it was a success.

The rest of the weekend was spent trying to recover from our late-night partying on Friday. Yes, I have reached the age where eating chicken nuggets from a drive-thru on the way home from a bounce house party at 10:30 can be considered late-night partying that requires a recovery period.

This week we're going to be hiding out in the air-conditioning because the temperature is supposed to be 107 or something equally as obscene for a while. I've rented an old Muppet movie for the kids, and I'm going to just sit in my nice cool home with the shades drawn for the next few days in an effort try to keep my skin from melting off my body.

A couple of years ago, Greg was interviewing for a job in Orange County, California right around this time of year. We flew out there for the weekend to check it out, and it was a lovely 72 degrees the entire time. We could not believe how nice it was there compared to the heat that we had left back home. Talking with a couple of the pastors at the church there, one of them quipped that Texas was such a great place to live because the property values were so much lower than in California, and that the same price for a normal house there would buy you a mansion in Dallas. To which the other fella next to him responded, "Yeah, but in the summertime, you'd be living in a mansion two doors down from hell."

Truer words were never spoken.