Beth's uploaded a bunch of new pictures at Ivyleaguebaby! Here's a couple of them:
Is this a pair o' lovely lassies or what? 
It slays me how much bigger the tuba still is than Hannah. ;^) At their blog there's a darling photo of Hannah playing a toy saxophone...much more her size!
Where does the summer GO?
OTOH, it's going to be yet another in a lengthy series of blistering hot days, but school starts in four short weeks.
Oy vey!
At the last Gladney collaborative meeting a woman who'd adopted a couple of kids from Russia back in the early 90's suggested someone who used to work for the Child Study Center, but now does diagnostic testing (you know, for learning problems, etc.) privately. Apparently she does a crackerjack job, sitting down with the parent(s) at the end of the three hour testing period and going over the results right then, with a hardcopy report following a week or two later.
Dmitry's got an appointment on August 5th. Maybe she'll be able to distinguish between the areas in which he has legitimate issues from those areas where he's just a lazy hound. 
Okay, just got back from running a couple of errands. Almost saw what would have been a bad accident!
I was on Camp Bowie Blvd. heading west, coming up to the intersection with Byers, in front of the shopping center containing Kay's Hallmark. An important facet of the situation is that Byers crosses Camp Bowie at a sharp angle, instead of intersecting it perpendicularly, hence those coming from the west on Byer can easily see the oncoming traffic on Camp Bowie that's coming from the east:
The large, reddish street is Camp Bowie (it's made of bricks, accounting for the color), and the street going straight east-west is Byers. I was roughly where the bus is...a bit farther back, though...and the pick-up truck was in the left lane, ahead of me. The light was red. Redder'n red. Couldn't possibly have been more red.
Truck totally ignored it, sailing majestically through the intersection.
Well, until he nearly slammed into the woman driving an SUV who was coming through from Byers, heading east. She paid no attention to this rather large pick-up truck that wasn't even slowing down, never mind stopping, not until it was maybe twenty feet from her, if that. They both slammed on their brakes and swerved right, missing each other by inches.
As the woman drove on past me, getting onto Camp Bowie, I saw her twist her head around to glare at the receding truck, obviously telling whoever it was she was talking to on her cell phone all about her scary near-miss.
Yup, she was on the cell phone, which doubtless explained why she didn't notice the truck at about 11 o'clock not stopping.
Finally caught up with the truck at the intersection with Horne, and surprise surprise! HE was on HIS cell phone!
Imagine my astonishment. 
So here were two drivers, both obviously paying a lot more attention to their phone conversations than what was going on around them, as he blithely runs a red and she doesn't notice a truck she can easily see at 11 o'clock isn't stopping as he should.
Do NOT talk on the phone while driving!!!!
It's 
HOT.
Not right this very second, but later on we'll be back in the 100's. The Weatherbug forecast's showing highs of 103°-105° for today, tomorrow, and the next day. 
When it's this hot I don't do much, and when I don't do much I haven't anything particular to write about. Thus the silence.
I am SO ready for brisk fall days with the leaves turning and falling, and baking banana bread.....
Charles got his official orders today! He graduates on Friday, August 18, and must be back in Groton on the 31st, whereupon he'll fly to Europe to take up his duties on the - ugh - Dallas. It'll be out on a six month deployment, so the next time he's home will be latish February, after it returns to its base in Connecticut. He's expecting he'll fly either to England or Italy, either of which pleases him, and he won't be hideously disappointed if the boat's not right there, forcing him to kick his heels a few days. 
Hard to believe two months from now he'll be on a submarine somewhere in the eastern Atlantic. 
BTW, if anyone is interested, here's a bit of Just Believe, a song the children in the MusiCamp show both sung and signed.
Made a You Tube video of Bethany's recital of John 10:19. Her voice is a little hard to hear (a woman had to quickly adjust the microphone to get it close to her mouth), but you can hear it, and she can be seen returning to her place to the right of the girl in the red shirt.
(Yes, there used to be a photo-type link to the video, but it went bad and I can't get it to work again. This seems to happen with YouTube videos, at least at this Xanga blog.)
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