Beating the Heat

In the midst of a record-breaking heatwave where we live (I read today it was hotter here than in JAMAICA!), I am beyond grateful for the not-typical wise purchase we made at the very beginning of the summer.

Every year in the worst of the summer heat, when air conditioners are hard to find in stock & are their most expensive, we swear "THIS fall, we will buy an air conditioner!!"...

(and I have had 2 August babies - so some of of those promises included actual swearing! LOL)

but there is something comforting about those cooler fall days & evenings, and it seems that once in the lull of more comfortable temperatures, the torturous ones are forgotten...

(Kinda like labor... I mean you know it sucked, but not until the first contraction with the next child do you recall exactly HOW MUCH it sucked - then it's too late!)

NOT THIS YEAR...

We had a very LONG winter & a SUCKY spring & it seemed like summer would never get here... then suddenly the first week of June - we just about cooked!! It got up to 35 degrees (Celsius) and none of us wanted to eat, couldn't sleep, forget about naps for Brynlea... one day when the kids (and us) were particularly crabby & sweaty, I'd had enough... there was NO WAY I was doing THIS for the entire summer!

I went to a local hardware store & they had LOTS of stock of air conditioners & in fact, were CLEARING out some of last years' models!! *SCORE*

So I managed to grab a 10,000BTU window unit for $198.00!! We installed it in our room & with some carefully placed fans to circulate the cooler air, it keeps our entire townhouse quite comfortable (our room is actually COLD! haha)

HAD to post this - SO funny!!

We had family visiting this week & had lots of fun (more to come on that), but what do a couple of 6 year olds do to pass the time on a VERY muggy afternoon??

If you're my cutie patootie daughter & nephew, you set up a lemonade stand (with help from your very cool mom/aunt) and make $2 selling lemonade to the inhabitants of our complex :)

...that was in only about 45 minutes because they couldn't stand the heat anymore than that either! lol

They were so cute! You could tell my nephew had been to a few baseball games, "GET your lemonade here, ice cold lemonade!" Averie chimes in "It's very refreshing!"

Seriously, does it GET cuter than that?!

End of the "Cat Debate" with one foul swoop! *warning: kinda graphic*

We have had an "animal encounter" - due to my husband's allergies (and most likely, Evan's as well) we do not have any pets...

(outside of "Frenchy" the goldfish who was a gift from my husband's grade 12 students at the end of the year)

My kids are not really socialized to animals. Averie & Evan like them, if they find their behavior a little intimidating at times, but Brynlea is quite scared of animals.

Though cats are not an option, my husband's allergies could likely tolerate a dog. At the moment, my sanity cannot. I have enough poop, pee & vomit in my life. Thank you very much.

Also, see THIS post about our already cramped living situation. I won't add a dog to the current cramped chaos.

My kids can repeat my mantra now anytime they ask for a dog - "Not until we have NO babies." And I will likely push this further to "all children in school".

While Averie understands that "cats make Daddy sick" - she has still pined for one.

Until yesterday.

I did a photoshoot for a dear friend of mine since highschool who has an adorable baby girl. After the shoot, I was going to the hospital to visit another good friend who had just had a baby. Averie wanted to come with me to both.

I figured she could be my pack rat in training assistant for the afternoon. So she came & carried stuff, then played with my friend's son while we did the photos. My friend has a couple cats. Averie was very interested in them.

She was being very good and gentle. Only playing/petting the more patient of their 2 cats & leaving the other alone.

As I was packing to leave - it happened. Suddenly, Averie was crying & ran to me with her hand over her eye. "The cat scratched me." When I managed to get her hand away, I couldn't see precisely where she had been scratched because she was crying blood. Disturbing? Yes! And just as much, if not more so, for my friends.

After cleaning her up a bit, we realized she had a VERY near miss - Your going to start blinking a lot, or rubbing your eye when you read this...

the cat had scratched across the bridge of her nose & the other claw had actually scratched the pink in the inside corner of her eye. The clincher was that it got it's claw in the tiny opening to her tear duct:

and well, kinda... um... tore it. I know - major bum squeeze! Admit it, you are sucking air through your teeth & squeezing your bum muscles right now! :)

We stopped the bleeding, I think her crying was actually good, because it flushed it out well - put a cold pack on it. Luckily, no scratch at all on the eyeball.

It appears to be healing really well. I debated about taking her to the doctor to have it checked out, but am erring on the side of "watching it" so far no redness or irritation showing at all.

You can see, in the close up, she has developed a bit of a "shiner" on that side. A black eye from a cat! Well, if that didn't end the cat debate - nothing will!

Now, I want to say very clearly, this was a VERY sweet cat and my friends were absolutely BESIDE themselves about it - they have called 2 times since it happened just to check on her & make sure she is okay. I am honestly confused about it - the only thing I can figure is having the AMAZING eyelashes Averie has, proved to be her undoing in this incident. I think it just saw those lovely lashes batting away & figured they would be a fun toy.

But expectantly, Averie has decided she no longer wants a cat.

On a funny note, as I was putting her to bed last night, I said, "We'll watch it & if it starts to be sore, or irriated, we'll go to the doctor so he can check it out" - She got this panicked look on her face and said "What?!" I repeated what I'd said & she says, "Oh! I thought you said so the doctor can tooked it out! I don't want to be like Grandad!" LOL (My dad is missing his right eye after a bout with cancer)

Thus ends the cat debate.

O Canada!

So, I am in over my head again. It is wedding season :) I LOVE it! However, it leaves me little time for blogging as most of my "me" time is used photo editing.

Since my family had the nerve to leave last week WITHOUT uploading their pictures of all the fun we had to my computer, I shall have to redirect you to a very cute video my sister did on her blog to see all that we did.

CLICK HERE