Damp

Akron receives the same amount of rain in a year that Seattle does. Cleveland receives more than Seattle. The wettest month of the year here is July. We are inside out. In the NW we were used to wet winters and dry summers. Here we have dry winters and wet summers. Our backyard is reverting back to its frog pond days (the man next door who has lived in the neighborhood since before most of the houses were built told us that it used to be a frog pond). It has rained nearly every day since June 1st.
There has been alot of rain in the last week, so much that our basement is taking in some water too, which is unusual. Usually the backyard is a pond, but the basement is dry.
Jan and Alec got to go camping this last week, in between rainstorms. They had really good weather and so much fun they will never stop talking about it. Steve and Heather, who work with David and go to our church, took them in their VW camper bus. They ate smores and fished (Alec caught 10) and swam and tubed behind a boat and hiked and ate hot dogs and lemonade and came home utterly exhausted. It has been fun to hear them tell stories about it.
Pati got sick while they were gone and last night Alec and Anne got it. They are spread out in the living room with fevers...but no throwing up...yet.
I think that when they all go down for naps Jan and I will put on some wading boots and try to help the backyard drains. We are growing some of the biggest mosquitos I have ever seen back there!

A Holiday

David had his first day of 3rd year on Tuesday. Two years down, three to go. He will be at Children's Hospital for the next three months. It looks as though it will be a very busy time.

The children have wanted to have a garage sale for a long time and we finally did it. It was a good way to meet some neighbors. The kids had a lemonade stand and sold (drank) all of it. Even the postman bought some. We didn't have enough merchandise left to open the garage sale the next day. The kids were disappointed but I wasn't.

Anne has wanted to ride a real bike for a couple of months now, but we did not have one that was her size. On our way home from a neighbors house two weeks ago a PINK bike with training wheels that was just her size was left out on the curb, with a bike helmet. (Leaving things out on the curb is the way to get rid of things here. Everyone seems to know that if it is out by the road it is free for the taking.) Anne was thrilled. She set her jaw and learned to ride it in a few days. The training wheels are still on and they will stay on until she learns to use her brakes. We just decorated all of their bikes for a little Fourth Of July Parade tomorrow morning.

We spent some time at Bluebird Lake this week. It is a private lake, you have to live in the neighborhood in order to have access to it. Someone in our church lives in the Bluebird Lake neighborhood and invited anyone in church who cared to come. We went early and left late. If we lived in that neighborhood we would probably go there nearly every day. Jan spent hours out on the dock jumping in. Alec has been waiting for a year now to use his little fishing pole, so he spent several hours hooking bait up, untangling his line, casting and reeling it back in. I was impressed with his patience. He didn't catch anything, but one of the older boys did. The little girls liked the sand and shallows the best. We came home sunburned and tired.

I forgot Pati's swimming suit but Anne had been wearing a skirt with a drawstring...and it was perfect to tie around Pati's neck. Everyone kept saying that they loved her suit and had no idea that it was her sisters skirt.
Tomorrow David will be home part of the day (and all of the night!)which we weren't expecting. That makes it a holiday aside from our country's birthday.