Rain and Sun

This summer has been a challenge. The weather seems to have been either cold and rainy or way too hot. Here's a picture from some of our indoor adventures on one of the rainy days... Clara likes to play dress up.
Henry has a new CD player/alarm clock in his room and I somehow allowed him to pick out a "Muppet Babies" CD at the library last week. He thinks it rocks.
He plays it over and over and there is much dancing.
By Thursday we were ready to brave the mediocre temperatures and get to the pool. The kids actually were very excited to go, this was just taken after I applied a very cold feeling spray sunblock to them...
Yesterday was dismal again for the whole morning. We entertained ourselves pretty well. This hamper served as a basket for playing ball.
Clara took a morning nap, and then refused to nap in the afternoon. Here is how I found her after about a half hour of crying and fussing. Note the one leg up, trying to climb out of the crib.
Last night we had a family date night at Dave's Italian Kitchen in Evanston. It was maybe the first time Clara's been there since she's been old enough to eat grown-up food. She quite enjoyed the spaghetti.
It's apparent in this photo that Henry also enjoyed the spaghetti.
Yes, it was yummy happy food all around.
I took this picture outside because it seemed like a good opportunity to document Henry in front of the Whole Foods where he caused me to throw up on Mother's Day while he was still in utero.
Then we found this big beetle.
It was a lovely night and we just wandered around a bit before getting back in our car. You can still see the beetle in this photo.
Today was actually quite lovely. After getting up to study at Starbucks again (I'm actually getting a little tired of Starbucks...maybe I need to change my drink?) and doing a little cleaning around the house, we went into the city for the Old Town School's Folk and Roots fest.
We had lunch at a great spot called the Fiddlehead Café.
Then we watched Pete's friend Lexi perform on the staff stage. Despite appearances in this photo (they were a little hot) the kids were really enjoying the music. There was dancing.
Henry's favorite thing, though, was this puppet show. If you look you'll see that this is a little puppet theater on the back of a bike. Henry was most interested in where the guy was and how he got in there and how it was attached to the bike... And when we got home he wanted to put on some puppet shows of his own.
Did I mention it was hot?
We got some ice cream treats from a street vendor and then headed back to the car.
I'll go ahead and apologize to Clara about 13 years in advance for this photo. She had been in the same diaper for quite some time. Knowing she was going to cash out in the car we thought it best to give her a quick change before heading home.
In anticipation of the new Harry Potter movie coming out this week I was really looking forward to watching the last one with Pete tonight (I saw it in the theater with Sharon, and Pete doesn't read the books, so we need to get him caught up) but we can't seem to rent it on itunes or rip it onto the apple TV. I'm a little disappointed. I suppose I could go read more about Teaching Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder.....bleh....