The Strongs: Summer Time In Texas

This summer was a complete beast. We had the hottest summer Texas has ever had with over 70 days of 100 or higher temps. To make it even more brutal, 40 of those 100+ degree days were in a row. It was not fun at all. Especially when all your 2 1/2 year old little boy wants to do is spend his entire day outside. We spent lots of time playing inside and in the pool in order to survive. Here are a some pictures of what we did this summer.

Blake rediscovered his Halloween costume from last year. He loves to put it on and fly like Buzz around our house.

Blake built his very first train track all by himself. He was so proud of it.

We celebrated Father's Day with Dad and Grandpa

Blake dressed up in Mommy's shoes and Daddy's BYU clothes

The 4th of July was an especially brutal heat day. We went to the Waxahachie parade with some good friends from our ward and by 10 AM it was already close to 100 degrees. We found some shade though and enjoyed another small town 4th of July parade.

Blake and his buddy Grant

We had LOTS of pool time! We have a community pool, but sometimes it is just easier to go swimming in your backyard so we got Blake a blow up pool and he loved it.

We signed Blake up for swimming lessons this summer too. We did a parent/child class since he is under 3 and he had a lot of fun. It was for an hour everyday (Monday-Friday) for 2 weeks and on the last day of class they let all of the kids in his class go down their big slide as often as they wanted. Blake had been trying to escape from class the entire 2 weeks by running off to the slide, so he was beyond excited to actually get to go down it. Unfortunately, since I was in the pool with Blake and Eric was at work during the lessons, we only got 1 picture of the swimming lessons and the rest was video. When Blake got his completion certificate they also gave him a popsicle to eat. He was definitely liking swimming lessons that day. Going down slides and eating popsicles, what more could a 2 1/2 year old want?

When Blake and I were at Target one day, he saw a picture of a Lightning McQueen birthday party they had on display in their birthday party supplies section. In the picture, the little boy had a Lightning McQueen birthday cake and from that day on that is all Blake talked about. He calls Lightning McQueen "Cha-Chow" (because Lightning McQueen says, Ka-Chow in the movie), so all day everyday Blake asked us for a "Cha-Chow" cake. Eric and I couldn't find a Lightning McQueen cake that wasn't crazy expensive, so we went to the store, got an non-decorated birthday cake, bought some Cars cars to put on top of the cake, and we made our own Lightning McQueen cake. Blake was so happy to finally have his very own "Cha-Chow" cake, even though it wasn't his birthday.

"Helping" Mommy Bake Cookies

Building "Parking Lots". I went into the toy room one day and Blake was building what he called a parking lot on top of the table. This was the end result of this parking lot, but the beginning to many more parking lots in random places through out the house.

We also had several trips to the Dallas Kids Aquarium with good friends and cousins. Blake loves going and seeing all of the fish, sharks, and turtles. He really likes seeing the alligators and feeding and touching the sting rays.

Touching the Sting Rays

Can you see the sting ray sticking his head out of the water? And, no this is not Blake's new hair do. The Sting Ray tank is outdoors so the wind was blowing his hair.