This is my long explanation as to why I haven't been blogging. I've been too hot. Seriously. That's it. There's not a table in the family room upon which to put my laptop and it's simply been too hot to have it on my lap. Then, this morning, it wasn't so hot. I checked the forecast, even though I'd last checked it last night about 11pm AND IT HAD BEEN CHANGED! Instead of a high of 100, it's 94. YESSSSSS! So here I am. And there you are. Hi. How are you? I like your shirt.

It took us FOREVER to get home from Wisconsin. We ended up sitting in the Minneapolis airport for three hours before they put us on the plane - they needed to fix an engine gauge. It would've been fine, but they started getting dumb about it. They would make an announcement saying what time they were going to give us an update and put that time up on the monitor, but when that time came, they wouldn't give an update and just changed the time on the monitor to half an hour later. This created very cranky travelers and could have been easily avoided. The last time they did this, I thought there was going to be anarchy. When the newly appointed time of 5pm rolled around, most people stood and glared toward the desk. But the woman behind the counter picked up her little microphone and said, "We'll begin boarding first class..." and there was a loud sigh of relief in the gate area. I feared she was going to be taken down if she said that we still didn't know when the repairs would be complete. Nice save, lady. 

It was a very full plane and people were practically jubilant to be boarding. We all took our seats quickly and then...nothing happened. We waited. And waited. And waited. There was no announcement from the cockpit. Nothing. The flight attendants walked through the plane with water and cups. People started demanding to know what the HELL was going on here. Forty-five minutes after we boarded the plane, the captain announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the delay. The plane is in perfect condition, but the catering truck broke down on the way to our plane and that delay caused another problem. This flight crew cannot go to Portland because we will be exceeding the FAA-mandated length of a duty day. So...we're waiting for a new flight crew to come on board and take you to Portland. I'm waiting for a call back from the airport's crew captain to let me know when they'll be getting here. Sorry about that, folks." And so we got up and walked with the girls. I went into the back of the plane to get some water. People were helping themselves to peanuts and sodas and $5 snack-packs. Anarchy had indeed taken over. One of the flight attendants came in back to get her stuff before deplaning and she had to ask nicely to get to the cooler where her thermos was kept. She didn't make eye-contact and moved quickly. None of this was her fault, but she was no dummy. The new crew finally arrived - an hour and 45 minutes after we'd boarded, nearly 5 hours since we were scheduled to depart - and they passed out $100 vouchers and free headsets to everyone. Instant heroes. Dude complained at the Portland airport and they gave us each additional $250 vouchers. The biggest saving grace? Neither girl pooped during the whole ordeal. Brilliant.

Here's a funny aside: When we were checking in at the Green Bay airport, Dude put one of our suitcases up on the scale, then took it off and put up the other, then took it off and put Belly up there. He was all, "Ooops!" with a big grin to the woman at the counter. "That's probably breaking a ton of rules, huh?" And she confirmed that it was. So he took her off and put the Bug on the scale so we could see how much she weighed, too. The woman behind the counter just cooed over how cute they were. You gotta love small town airports. And for the record, they each weigh 26 pounds even.

Here are a coupla pictures from our trip:

Aren't the girls adorable?? That's a rhetorical question. I'm not even posting all of the ridiculously cute nudie pictures of the girls at the lake. Those will be emailed directly to the grandparents. Here are two last pics, though, from about a week before our trip.