Summer Count Up, 5

Well, THAT week went fast. Here's what we did:

Day 25: The girls saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. It was pretty far away (hence the kind of rotten photo) but clearly Lady Liberty. I don't know who was more excited about it -- them, or me seeing them see this important piece of US history in real life, for the first time:

 Day 26: Rob was heading back down to the city to visit Ellis Island with his family, while the girls and I stayed at Uncle T.A.'s house for a barbecue and general fun. After I dropped Rob off at the train station in Katonah I took the long way home to see some of the sights of my childhood. This is the Amawalk Reservoir, which (I think) is one of the ways that NYC gets their water. I mostly just think it's pretty. We used to drive by this every day to and from school and one year when there was a pretty bad drought you could see islands and all sorts of junk on the bottom of it, since the water level was so low. I seem to recall even seeing a car emerge, but that might have been a different lake back behind Hilltop Dr.:

Day 27: We returned home in the afternoon and later that evening I found THIS in my freezer. When I asked what the heck it was, Lizzie told me that she had so much fun at Tommy and Brenna's that she wanted to bring a water balloon home with her. So she put it in the freezer to save it forever. Forever lasted about 24 hours when she saw here that the ice had broken through the balloon:

Day 28: Tuesday was HOT and HUMID. I'm pretty sure it was about 112 degrees outside. It was one of those days that was just too hot to go to the pool. So I ventured down into the unfinished part of the basement and dug around until I found this old sprinkler dog that I bought when we lived in our old house and didn't belong to a pool. The girls were excited to give it a try and I was excited to sit on the hammock in the shade and watch them. His ears, tongue and tail all squirt water and when they do, they start wagging and the dog gets pretty animated. It was enough water for the girls to cool down and I didn't have to go sit at the hot pool:

Day 29: Hannah is reading to get her daily star. Lizzie is trying to annoy her, but Hannah is a very focused reader and would not be deterred. The chart just behind Hannah's head shows her progress towards earning a hamster. Both girls have a chart because they both want hamsters (well actually Lizzie wants a bunny, but that's not happening -- EVER!!) If they read and do math M-F and then just read on the weekends, they can mark off another circle on their charts. Sixty circles earns them a hamster. And me another pet clean-up headache:

Day 30 - And speaking of hamsters, it has now become a regular trip to local pet stores to see if they have hamsters. This pet store had only one dwarf hamster, but they did have a crotchety old cat that fascinated Hannah and Liz for awhile:

Day 31: The girls got to hold Mrs. Entrekin's (my friend Amy) chickens. Hannah said they were soft; Lizzie said they smelled bad -- but that's about what I would have predicted they'd say: 

Day 32: HERSHEY PARK!!! I'll do a blog post entirely devoted to Rob's company picnic at Hershey, but here's proof that I was actually there with the kids, walking around and getting my picture taken with somewhat bizarre Hersheys characters. This is Jolly Rancher:

Bonus Photo: Sometimes I wonder if Cash is part afghan hound or some other not-so-bright breed because he could NOT stop barking at the fake plastic dog that was spewing water. And when I went to get it off the yard, he RAN AWAY like the big scary FAKE dog was going to get him: