Coolness!

I'm cool! Oh yeah!

Rain or Shine

We've still been having that great summer weather - sun and in the 80's to 90's here in Covington.

But it is Seattle, so last week threw a few rainy/cloudy days in there. In spite of the weather, Jadyn was determined to play in her pool. With no water, I might add. So she threw a coat over her "summer clothes" and a pair of puddle-stomping boots, and headed out to play anyways. What a kick!

Karina wasn't so sure, so she just watched from the safety of the kitchen screen door.



A few days later, back to sun, and we're on the way to visit some friends (Chad & Cindy) when we notice a climber toy at a garage sale. $3 later, the girls are having a blast climbing up and down, sliding, crawling over and under, and just being kids.

A worthy investment.

Life is still busy, but good. Mark has his probationary firefigthter midterm test tomorrow night. Yay - that means he's half-way through his first year! We both head to camp with the junior high kids next week in eastern Washington on the Columbia River.

It's going to be a busy 2nd half to the month. But that's how we like it!

Danger: Sarcasm ahead

Lunch time, and we've been working with Jadyn on not whining today. As she sat at the table eating, she turned and noticed a shirt she likes hanging on the back of the chair. She leaned over, and in a whining voice said, "But I wanted to wear this shirt today."

A little frustrated, I sarcasticly replied, "That was a nice whine, but that's not how we ask for things."

Jadyn turned back to eat, and voiced, "Okay... but that was a nice whine, wasn't it Daddy?"

Oops. After trying to hide my laughter, I had to explain that one. "No... Daddy was just joking when he said that, and..."

Firefighter's Humor

Yesterday was a pretty slow day (for emergency calls), but we had an entertaining HazMat (Hazardous Materials) call last night. Someone working at a hardware store around 10:30PM dropped a pallet of materials onto a 500 gallon propane tank, breaking off part of it and starting a good-sized leak. Fortunately it didn't ignite, but still a big problem and probably a job-opening at the hardware store.

The truck I was on that day got called in, along with several other units, and what did we get to do, you ask? Our company shut down one of the roads around the store (in case of explosion) and then... well, nothing. We sat and waited in case things got worse. Our department's HazMat Unit that deals with these calls went in to take care of things, and there we were, guarding the street in the middle of the night for 2 hours! Oh yeah... it's a tough job , but somebody's got to do it! :-)

The best part of the night, though, was that the chiefs all came in and took over command, as usual. And where did they set up their command post... right next to a Krispy Kreme donuts. Ha! We kept laughing as more chiefs would arrive and call over the radio to ask where the command post was, only to hear, "we're on the corner of such and such roads, right next to Krispy Kreme." How embarrasing. What do you call that... "Krispy Command?"

You can never be too prepared...

We went out to a restaurant last night for dinner. Our server had just brought our complimentary glasses of water, when Jadyn began looking around, inquisitively searching for something. At last, she tugged on my sleve and asked, "Daddy - does this restaurant have a bathroom?"

Thinking we had a minor emergency looming on the horizon, I began to get up and replied, "Yes - do you need to go potty?"

"No," she said matter-of-factly, "but I was thinking that if I drink all this water, I'm going to have to go real soon."