I wonder if you can tell there’s a lot of heat outside the window behind us?

So I’m sitting here wondering where the summer went. I feel like we’ve crammed two months worth of activities into July alone. Several times last week I went to the calendar thinking it was already August as a result.

We left town right as school got out this year for the kids. We brought home some cousins to stay with us after that trip and then we drove back a second time to Idaho. We had one more trip to Las Vegas for a family event the 3rd weekend in July. Now I’m sitting here with the vacation and traveling done, looking at the calendar and realizing my kids start school in 14 days and feeling rather dazed.

So naturally, I redirect my thoughts to all the future things I want to get done, etc.! Before I know it the weather will be great again and I’ll be balancing my time with outside yard and garden time. There’s so much I want to do.

I’m also finding myself longing to get back into some projects that I can wrap up. My photo project is moving back up to the front of the list. I want to get all my backups organized, tagged, etc. and I want copies of all my new digital photos to have paper copies in the photo books too.

I’ve recently thrown baking into my hobby list of things I want to improve on. I baked my first loaf of homemade bread last week. I’ve made a lot of things from scratch, but bread was always more intimidating to me and it’d always been so much easier to pick up a loaf when shopping at the store. It was much easier than I was expecting and it’s been received extremely well. I’m getting ready to branch out into specialty and dessert breads.

Before I know it I’ll be celebrating kid’s birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Time flies.

So I just did a search on my blog because I knew I wrote some reviews of Harry Potter stuff somewhere back there. I found it: Harry Potter Review. I wrote it on July 25th two years ago. Here I am writing more Potter reviews two years later almost to the day. How weird is that?

This review is of the sixth movie which we saw last night. It left an impression because I had Harry Potter dreams all night long, which were amplified by the incredible monsoon storm that raged so loudly so much of the night and early morning. I’m pretty sure that Emmett and Edward Cullen hit some home runs in my back yard last night!

Speaking of the Twilight digression, there’s much to be said with the Potter movie release, aftermath of Twilight and knowledge that both series have more movies in the works. What I find interesting isn’t that there are so many comparisons being made but rather the mere fact that they’re being compared at all. One is magic, one is vampires, yet both struck an amazing accord with fans. One is twice as long as the other, yet both left fans wanting more. Personally, I’m just tickled both were written because I thoroughly enjoyed them and loved being reminded how much fun reading can be.

Now, back to the movie. I thought the sixth movie was excellent. I preface this with the acknowledgment that I was a reader of the books because I think if you weren’t there would be a lot more questions and uncertainty when the credits began to roll, especially if this was your first HP movie. This book/movie in the series was extremely transitional and background filling. I had forgotten how much so until the movie last night. The movie couldn’t capture the depth of what was learned in the book but they skimmed it nicely, in my opinion. We learned that Snape was a brilliant wizard and were left questioning where his allegiances lay. Dumbledore hints to Potter’s invaluable worth and trusts him with very difficult and challenging work. The future relationships of the main characters take more focus. In fact, I’d forgotten about how prevalent the love potion and love story lines were in the sixth installment. When Ron fell off the sofa in a state of love sickness I couldn’t suppress the laughter. I’ve always enjoyed watching Harry Potter come to life on the big screen and this movie was no disappointment. The characters are older and enjoyable to watch. I’m so so so glad there haven’t been any major cast changes over the years, that really ruins sequels for me. I was sad that we lost the original Dumbledore actor because he was perfect for me. I think it’s amazing and some sort of record to make this many movies with so little cast changes though and I applaud the responsible parties for that.

Watching the show sparks an interest to go back and re-read the books as I’ve forgotten so much over the years. I think true Harry Potter fans will be very satisfied with this last movie. If they’re anything like me they’re already wishing we could evaporate to the release of the final two!

Amazing what a few minutes of building a marble run with my son will buy. *wink* Thanks to helping him build this I got a whole hour of nap time! Yay for marble runs!

Incidentally, as an owner of two sets, I have advice to share for anyone considering them. The first set I bought was a wooden one with colorful blocks and sections of rectangular runs. It looked fantastic but it showed manufacturing thoughtlessness in the design and cut. The run grooves were all completely flat so the marble wouldn’t roll; they should have been cut on an angle creating a slight slope. Unfortunately the blocks were all cut to the same sizes with no wedge pieces so if you tried to manually create a slope it would be too high or too low and cause the drop holes not to align. In short, it looked great and wood lasts, but it never worked as a marble run.

I should like to note here that as a little girl I remember hours spent playing with my cousin’s marble run. It was nothing more than a single column with sloping zigzag style rows. Proof to me that often less is more.

I purchased this plastic marble run set from a company called Mindware. It’s been a great toy and has been used and abused without breaking. My only wish on this set is that it had a few more collection bases for multiple runs and few more pieces. For example, there’s a 3 run connector piece that allows three runs to come to one hole for collection, but I’ve found the more helpful one would have been one that took one hole and split it out into several runs, especially as the connector unit’s runs are so short. Additionally, there’s a fun piece that sends the marble into a slot maze but there’s only one entrance and exit. Again, it would be even more fun if that piece had at least 2 or 3 different exit points adding more variation to the run. But all in all, this toy gets a 5 star rating from me and earning me a nap is icing on the cake!

Tonight brought a happy surprise. My daughter has been begging me for quite a while to make her favorite dessert. It’s a miniature chocolate raspberry torte from one of her favorite dinner places, P.F. Changs. We bought some shot glasses and mini spoons shortly after the restaurant started offering their individual sized desserts. We’ve had fun doing various types at home, but to date I haven’t done her beloved chocolate with raspberry sauce. So tonight I decided to tackle it for her. I was going to make devil’s food chocolate cake but when I did a search online I found a copycat recipe for the Chang’s version so I used that. The flourless chocolate cake was dreamy and super easy too. My happy addition was finding that my apple corer worked perfectly for gathering up small circle sizes of the cake to fit the shot glasses.

I decided as long as I was going to do the dessert I’d see if I could make my favorite dinner dish from there too, Mongolian Beef. I was so tickled at how well it turned out! It was worth sharing, especially for bookmarking the recipe for later! I even snapped a photo of the leftover dish and it turned out pretty good too! Yay for sweet success.

Traveling requires a lot of compromise. Convenience, time and cost are the major players and sometimes they’re not always on the same side. With two trips to Idaho this summer for various family events we knew we’d have to buck up and take the hit in the convenience department to make both happen. No amount of pulling for that private or charter jet could counter the bank account’s argument that the cost of gas versus airline tickets was a landslide. On the upside, I don’t mind driving and enjoy having time to visit with Blake. However, 64 hours of it in a month’s time is a little extreme. So on our last drive home we stopped over in Las Vegas to spend the night with Grandma. This is the first time we’ve been over the Hoover Dam in a couple years and the progress they’ve made on the new freeway through there is amazing! I only wish these pictures could do justice to the instant queasy feeling in your stomach you get when you see it in person. That gorge is a LONG way down!

As you can see from the pictures, the supporting arch is nearly complete. The road will continue where the side connection towers show. It is an amazing engineering feat in my mind.

Another sad but interesting tidbit is how much the water level has dropped. When I was first married our trips over the dam were very different. There was water in all the white areas of these photos. the water line used to come right up under the time towers. We’ve watched it drop ever since.

My kids were greatly intrigued with the dam on this trip. Taylor recognized many of the buildings and structures from the movie Transformers and kept himself occupied trying to figure out where they were all placed. Cidnie started to comprehend the enormity of the dam and the value of resources like water. It’s fun to watch your kids grow.

I’m still not sure I’m going to have the guts to drive over the dam when the road is finished. I suspect it will feel a lot like the uneasiness I experienced about half way over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. 17.6 miles of bridge-tunnel is a very long way. I’m not sure how high this new archway and road over the dam is, I just know craning my neck to look up at it makes my stomach churn.

I still can’t believe I have a tween daughter. I swear it was only yesterday that she was buttering the Yorkie and squealing with delight at the top of her toddler lungs. But alas, the calendar and her physical traits say otherwise.

From the onset, my little girl was a social butterfly. She simply flourishes in social settings and absolutely loves interacting with other people. She’s been lamenting the fact that she is too young for a Facebook account for quite some time now. So when I received an e-mail invitation to help test a new online social networking site for tween girls I jumped right in. The site is called My Secret Circle.

One of the sponsors is my daughter’s all time favorite girl store, Justice for Girls. This was definitely a great start. The idea is that each girl has her own unique USB port key which allows them to create and share their own circle of information with chosen friends. The set they sent me was a dual pack with one key for my daughter and another to share with a friend or sibling.

What I like about this is the security aspect of my daughter having fun online with her friends. However the security comes with a price. The downside of the network requiring a USB key means there’s a high likelihood the device will get lost or broken.

I am constantly amazed at how much my daughter wants to interact and be a grown up. I think this product has the ability to help fill a specific niche for those girls too young to be teens and doing teen things, but wanting so much to feel as big as one.

Nice to know that we made it home from vacation in time for this weekend’s extreme heat advisory!

“The National Weather Service issued an “excessive heat outlook” for the weekend, with Saturday’s high expected to reach 116 degrees” - azcentral.com

Nice. Sounds like it’s time to stock up on ice for the pool! LOL

Our second trip to Idaho was so packed with events, I’m still trying to sort through the pictures and remember all we did. This one however was a real keeper.

Granted, the fish is small, but it was Taylor’s first fishing experience and he was the only one who caught one! He was SO delighted! Clearly dad wasn’t sad either…*snort*

I have to preface this with the story of how Taylor has had two big “to do” items on his list of wishes lately. One was to go bowling (for real, not just the Wii) and two was to go fishing. Last month, his dad surprised him one night with a bowling trip. I wish we’d had a camera for his song and dance of joy. After he squealed delight and danced around for several minutes he stopped suddenly and said, “What about fishing?”

So this fishing trip has been a long time coming. The best part was that his very first time was a success! He was so proud.