Matthew's last day of being 3

The day started out worse off than we anticipated. We knew today was going to overcast and windy but we decided to go ahead with our beach day plans anyway. Mother nature, as cruel as she had been with us with the year-long drought, she decided to throw us another curve ball. Houston / Galveston were getting the extreme outer bands of tropical storm Lee since Friday, so instead of an overcast and a slightly windy day, what we got was a very windy and cloudy day with a little wind-driven misting rain to chill all of us to the bone. Not enough to accumulate, but just enough to annoy and get you wet ... but the the wind just finished the job. Jacob and Matthew did have a chance to dig some sand and have the strong wind blow some bubbles but we got cold too quickly.

What also unexpected was some mysterious hair-looking seaweed that was strewn all of the beach. Matthew was grossed out by it and eventually wanted to be carried out the water but Jacob did not seem to care...



This weekend, however, was a total contrast to the previous weekend's crazy weather when we experienced two of the hot days on record. Last Saturday, August 27th, we tied the record for the hottest day at 109 degrees (!!!) and "only" got to 107 on Sunday. The last time Houston hit 109 was in 2000 during a desert heat wave from Las Vagas / Arizona which lowered the humidity to near zero which made the heat bearable -- heck, I remember driving home from work with the windows down, the thermometer reading 107 and it felt like it was in the low 80s... Last weekend, however, the 109 degree heat felt like we were in an oven! Today, with the overcast sky and 10 to 25 mph winds, we got to 87 degrees in Houston and only 83 degrees in Galveston.

Anyway, to make up for a bad beach outing, we went to the McDonald's close to NASA so he and Jacob could enjoy the HUGE playground. This was the same playground that daddy took him to after our Space Center Houston during Christmas break last year (See our January 6th blog entry entitled "Space Center Houston visit"). It was so big, that Matthew said that he has scared to go to the top of the playground (I called it his new habittrail) to get to a super twisty slide. This statement was a bit surprising since he goes to a playground in the Friendswood McDonald's all of the time which is just as tall -- maybe there were too many pipes to go though so he simply did not want to bother... He was, however, helping his little brother climb into slide in the toddler area of the playground. Oh, boy did Jacob love it! He kept sliding and sliding until daddy dropped from exhaustion -- Daddy drove to and from Galveston, got chilled too, and kept a watchful eye to make sure Jacob makes it out of the slide and gets him back into the toddler area... Below are some picture of the partners in crime...er, climbing...

While Jacob was taking a long nap to recover from today's activities, momma was taking a long hot bath, Matthew watched some Dora The Explorer and daddy cooked some steaks on the grill. To finish his last day as a 3 year old, Matthew finished a WHOLE filet mignon all by himself. He absolutely loved it!