"hewoh" and other cute stuff

have i mentioned that the cutest thing ever that hana is doing these days is putting her hand by her ear as if she talking on the phone and saying "hewoh"? aaah! i could watch her do that all day. it makes me laugh every single time. i'm chuckling just thinking about it.

one of the ladies in my mom's group arranged for a bunch of us to get the special hook up at the oakland greek festival. we really had a good time, despite the heat. and it was HOT. like the surface of the sun kinda hot. but maybe not at hot as arizona. but it was hot. did i mention the heat? seriously though, we were treated like honorary greeks practically. they had THE most AMAZING food. i swear i ate the best lamb chop i've ever had in my LIFE that day. i still think about that lamb chop and it's many days later. mmmmm. sweet little tasty lamb chop. how i miss you so.... uh. sorry. i digress. apparently this greek festival is no joke after dark. it's like a big night club with wall to wall people and dancing and everything. jon and i have been intending to come to the festival since we moved up here (almost 14 years ago!!!) so it was nice to finally do it. someday, it will be cool to experience the greek festival after dark.

it's up on the hill and there are beautiful vistas from the church, so outside of the festive atmosphere, and the amazing food, it's probably pretty to see too.

(all partied out)

and speaking of the heat, this most recent heat wave sent us in search of a baby pool. after visiting 5 stores in search of the cheap plastic shell baby pool thingy we still couldn't find one. apparently, it was not an original idea. in several places, they couldn't just say, "sorry, we're sold out". oh noo. they had to mock us. "shya... those have been gone for daaays!" so i settled on a pool that requires what feels like 50 gallons of water to fill it up. it also requires that we be on absolutely flat ground. which we are not. so before hilarity and refreshment could ensue, i had to figure out had to make this darn thing work. i could fill it so that it's only very shallow but then the sides don't stand up. and if i fill it too much, because it's not on flat ground, water is spilling out of one side, while i can barely keep the wall up on the other side. sigh. but once i sorted that out the pool did the trick.

jenny brought the twins over (party of 5!) and the kids splashed around in the pool, and they got to cool off signifigantly. which was fun until they discovered that they could bend the sides down and make huge tsunamis of water spill over the side.

i was hoping, prehaps delusionally so, that they wouldn't figure out how to undo what i'd worked so hard to correct, but i guess you just got to roll with these things. and since, the day after i bought this stupid pool we were informed that we are now under water rationing (we have to cut back our water use by 20%!) and any watering causing "run off" is strictly forbidden, i'm a little paranoid that the water police are gonna come by and give us a citation. because of our little baby tsunamis. so for now, the pool is closed.

fortunately, the weather has cooled off and the pool use doesn't seem quite so urgent. i'm hoping they sort this water thing out before the mercury surpasses 90 degrees again because we don't have air conditioning, which makes our house more akin to an easy bake oven on hot days. but i realize that too is somewhat delusional and we'll just have to pack up and head off to our friendly neighborhood lagoon on the next scorcher.