Well in a house that has no air conditioning we headed straight for one of our Delia Smith cookbooks, turned on the oven and made some bread and scones! For those who prefer the conversion, 39 degrees Celcius works out to be 102 degrees in Farenheit. 
The only problem was that the ambient temperature was way too high for the scone mixture so we were unable to roll out the scone dough and cut into nice pieces, instead they turned into scone blobs. But they still tasted just as good. Here is a picture of the scones and also the bread rolls. The bread sat out on the deck to have its second rise and they doubled in size in about 5 minutes!
We are however very pleased to report that we both work in offices that have air conditioning creating our own small carbon foot prints.
Earlier this week Rachael decided to do some radical gardening. It was amazing how quickly the plants in the garden (back yard as they call it here) had grown. After 4 hours of clipping, pruning and pulling weeds being helped by Harley and Phantom I had finished. The cats thought it was great fun to hide in the huge piles of cuttings just as I was trying to load them into the truck for a trip to the transfer station (dump-it site). For garden waste dumping it is charged by the truck load at $5 (2.50GBP). Unfortunately we don't have the space for a composter or compost heap as we did in England and they are really not such a great idea in town as they attract bears and we don't really fancy that! I crammed as much garden matter as I could into the truck and headed off to the transfer station. It is quite cool how they keep track on how much waste you are dumping - they weigh you in and weigh you out - and for all you Dietitians out there reading this, by 'you' I mean the truck not just me! Our weight differential was 45kg. I took a picture to show the truck.
To celebrate having Oscar for 1 month we had been looking at getting him a new bed. One of our friends suggested a company that make some really high end dog beds which you could select the material and style of the bed to match your decor, well unsurprisingly these beds were a jaw dropping $200 (100GBP) after tax and delivery WOW !
So we decided to visit our local Walmart (our version of Asdas) and found a nice dog bed for $25. Well we figured he's not going to know anyhow and bearing in mind that he is currently snuggling up on an old bath mat don't think he is fussy.
Here is a picture of Oscar in his new bed followed by a picture taken 10 minutes later when Phantom discovered a new bed in the house and it was still warm - a cats dream! 
We are hoping for some cooler weather towards the end of this week with the forecast for Thursday being just 15 degrees Celcius with a splash of rain.
Catch up next week,
Rachael, Shaun, Harley, Phantom and Oscar
xx
