Hottest Yet!

Tuesday, August 2nd brought the hottest day of the 2011 year thus far.  And the hottest day of the year, to date, brings the need to experiment a little with the heat by way of two eggs, a cookie sheet and a sidewalk.



To cook an egg on the sidewalk, one must have an egg and a sheet pan (unless you want permanent egg on your sidewalk because, believe it or not, baked-on egg doesn't wash off as easily as you might think!)



Then, you must find a hot spot on the sidewalk and figure out how to crack the eggs.  



Sarah Rose tried cracking hers, but, not ever having cracked an egg before, used a little too much force and ended up completely smashing it on the sidewalk...its that wet spot there beside Caleb.  In a panic, she then dropped the egg.  I quickly grabbed it and threw it on the pan.  Caleb has had lots of practice cracking eggs for cookies, cakes and so on, so he had no problem.




See?  He's an egg-crackin' pro!




Sarah Rose got the blue egg on the right and Caleb got the brown egg on the left.  We put the shells by the eggs that were theirs.  We have a "waiting list" several dozen long of people wanting eggs, but experimenting with my kiddos was totally worth the two eggs we spared.




We cracked the eggs at 11:45 and it was 98.6 degrees out.  At 2:00(ish), it had hit 104.9 degrees out and the eggs were pretty well cooked through.  They were a little rubbery, but totally edible if one was hungry enough to put aside the thought of all the gnats that had landed on them throughout the day.




By 4:00, the eggs were not only cooked, but baked on the cookie sheet.  Note to self: remember to lay down aluminum foil before cracking eggs when doing this project again.  The pan is soaking as I type this in hopes that the egg will come off.




This is our thermometer.  It registers the indoor and outdoor temperatures.  To measure the outdoor temperature, we run its wire with a thermometer sensor out through a window and it sends the information back to this little gadget that sits on top of our desk.  It has a function that records the high and low temperature, which I made to show for this picture.  The top number was today's high (in the shade, which I'll explain in the next picture): 105.8 degrees.  The middle number was the last cold night this past winter after I reset it (it got colder, but I reset it from time to time to see the low for the day): -9.9 degree!  I'm very sure its accurate, as we have compared it with other thermometers and temperature recordings from other places (i.e. the news and internet sources) and it always matches.




The wire with the thermometer sensor for the outdoor temperature runs behind our desk and then out the office window.  We've rigged the wire (not the sensor) to another stiff wire to make the sensor stand out in mid-air so its actually taking the air temperature.  This window faces the north, so by the time I took the picture of the 105.8 degrees at 4:30 (ish), this side of the house had been in the shade for several hours.




This picture is just to show my gratitude for air conditioning and the ability to provide cool relief for my family.  The out side temperature when I took this was 105.6 while we were comfortable in 73 degrees.  We really are blessed to live in such a way to be comfortable in such extremities.  Praise God :-)