It's just baking now, but it actually rained here the other day. As you can see our swales kept the water in the yard, but it may have been a bit too much for the mesquite tree. The dirt around the trunk was really soft and the wind whipped it pretty well. We'll see. They are a tough tree and it'll probably do just fine. Our little palo brea over in the right side of the picture was sheltered from the wind by the fence. CP didn't seem to mind the rain and couldn't figure out what all of the excitement was about. We took her to the garden meeting on Saturday and she did well. It seems that excursions of two hours or less are fine. After that, it's rollin' the dice. She'll go tonight to the cycling club meeting and get to see some new people, but right now she's sleeping now and it's quiet.

The "new" video camera is finally here and works really well. I ordered a firewire PCI card from newegg.com that allows me to write the video to the hard drive where the Ulead Video Studio software makes it into a movie automatically. I can still alter it if needed though. I've had fun with the night shot function on the camera. Everything comes out green, but being able to see in the dark is pretty wild. The next DVD for the grand and great-grandparents will be a bit different from the grainy previous offerings.

CP finally has a mattress for the crib that Grandma Sch brought for her. I found a set with a bumper, sheet, mattress, and blanket at a local Twice as Nice shop and it's been good. She'll just nap there though until the LW's SIDS paranoia is reduced to levels not requiring medication.

The LW and I watched a PBS show about Vancouver by Rudy Maxa the other night and it was nice for her to see what I saw when I went there. Wanderlust set in immediately and we'll probably vacation there with CP if we ever have a spare cent to our name again.....ever. Kids there can learn several languages in grade school as compared to here where the offerings are spanglish, street slang 101, thugwannabe 45, and english for the (child who is) left behind.