Flashback Friday: Hotter than Georgia Asphalt

You might be familiar with the Alan Jackson song "Chattahoochee" (then again, you might not).  No matter, either way.  There's a line in the chorus that goes....

Went down yonder on the Chattahoochee

It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie

We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt

Got a little crazy, but we never got caught 

Apart from the apparent obvious and wildly inappropriate definition (in the realm of my family-oriented blog at least) of a hoochie coochie, I've learned that the hoochie coochie was actually a provocative dance made popular at the World's Fair in the late 1800's.  Slightly less risque, but along the same vein as the inferred meaning. 

And since I'm quite prudish I'm electing not to talk about that any further.

I will mention another phrase in that chorus.  That's right.  The Georgia asphalt. 

If you haven't spent a summer in the South (or some other place that's ridiculously hot), you can't really appreciate the significance of hot Georgia Asphalt.  I've never tried it, but I wholeheartedly believe you could fry an egg on it.  Shoot, you could probably fry an egg on the white, concrete sidewalk.  Despite my penchant for going around barefoot, regrettably, that isn't an option down here in the summertime.

I just walked outside to my van from my office.  As I opened the front door, I felt a burst of sticky heat that made me want to retreat back inside where the air conditioner is doing its darndest to keep up.  It's not terribly unlike the feeling when you're baking something and you open the over door to peek in at it.  Actually, that's an almost perfect analogy.

I'm sorry.  I'm dwelling on this.  Heat and humidity of this magnitude makes me grumpy. 

Really, when the heat index at 8pm is one degree shy of 100, that's just wrong.  And this isn't even the hottest, most humid day in the imminent forecast. 

Gross.

At least my kids don't seem to mind it as much.  Maybe there is something to being born down here.  Perhaps heat tolerance is a product of your environment, and it's just going to take me some more time.  I have definitely gotten better (though you can't necessarily tell from my habitual whining about the subject).

Sure they get red cheeks and sweaty hair, but they still opt for outdoor play over inside play every time.

Here are just a few "flashbacks" of some of those hot, fun moments.  There was that time last summer when we took our babies for a walk on the hottest day yet, in mid-July.

And got back from it looking like this:

Then there was the most beautiful, albeit "warmest" wedding we'd ever attended a month prior to that, where my gorgeous kids were the ringbearer and flower girl dressed in full wedding regalia...and nary a peep was heard from them about the heat.  (But it might have helped that Abby employed a battery-operated fan mid-ceremony.)

After the ceremony was over, a clever Daddy cooled his girls off by sitting on the a/c vent inside (with a little help from Uncle Simon and his cardboard box fanning action).

Then there was the recent school fundraiser/fun run, where it wasn't necessarily hot but insanely humid, and my big man ran his little heart out.

And following in the footsteps of her older siblings, here's my precocious one year old playing outside just last night without regard to the temperature, donning the pink cheeks just like her big brother and sister.

I guess as it turns out, it really doesn't matter what the temperature is because you can have fun anywhere if you look for it, right?

And plus, we have one of these...

And you can never get too big or too old to take a dip in a baby pool.

May you all have a happy, cool weekend.  And try not to stress (like me) if your forecast looks a little something like this: