Yesterday for the Fourth of July we had a pretty laid-back day. We hung around the house that morning. Eliana had her weekly art class at 10 a.m. I took Ellie to the movies, Ratatouille, which was good, around noon with Mark and his kids. When we came out of the movie the thermostat in the truck said it was 118. Then tonight, after fueling up while Dominic and I were out and about, it read 123. Yes, it’s downright miserably hot here right now.

And it’s warming up in places besides just outdoors. Tonight I went to have some ice cream after dinner and found that it had melted. Upon further inspection, the entire back inside of our freezer is covered with an inch of frost. Did I mention we have a no-frost freezer? Here we are a few hours later and there’s pretty much no cool air in the freezer or fridge. So, there’s yet another project for Vickey to attend to tomorrow.

It’s a Kenmore fridge, barely seven years old, and Sears said they could come service it on the tenth. Let’s hope Vickey’s able to find someone to take a look at it tomorrow. And hopefully it’s a small repair (who am I kidding?). If it’s too expensive I guess we’ll end up with a new unit. And this with Dominic’s birthday party coming up on Saturday.

In other news, while Eliana was playing on the trampoline this week with the Nelson girls, Olympia and Penelope, she hurt her neck. We didn’t see it, so we don’t know exactly what happened. This was just a couple days after she was playing at the Coglianese pool and jumped off their ledge next to their pool, did a flip in the air, and hit the back of her head on the cement pool edge. Just one head injury after another. She’s walking around like Quasimoto (Vickey’s observation) with her head tilted to one side. Poor kid! X-rays, or at least a trip to a physician, may be in order for her if she doesn’t straighten her head soon.

We enjoyed a fun barbeque and swimming at Mark and Amber’s yesterday, followed by playing with sparklers and snaps. Then we drove around the Henderson foothills to view the fireworks from around the valley. It was a pretty cool view, one of the things I love about the Vegas Valley, being able to see across the valley when you get up high enough. Then we had to take the Sequoia in to the dealer to drop it off for a recall repair on the ball bearings that was completed today. They informed us that the front brakes would need to be replaced in the next 1,000 miles or so.

It was a late night last night and I’m sure tired tonight. Being tired seems to just be a state of being these days.

And by the way, wouldn’t it be nice not to have to pay for or maintain things? Have I mentioned that we removed just about all the plants that were added to our back yard last fall? They were all dead. And now it looks like many of the plants in front are on their way out as well. Guess that does it for us and plants.

I think I’ll go help Vickey empty the fridge into the cooler our neighbors brought over and into the small amount of fridge space in our garage unit. Then I’m going to bed.