4th of July

On the 4th of July every year, we start our day with our youth group's pancake breakfast that's right next door to our house. Then we come back home, set our chairs out for the parade, and come inside for awhile to watch the runners out our front windows. After a few minutes, we get antsy and head out to our chairs.

We hang out with my family. In our driveway. Where the parade goes past. It's a rough life.

It's also a sunny life. Or it was for this particular 4th of July. 

Shortly before the parade started, I ran back in the house to grab hats for the kids. 

Then it was time for a wonderful, small town parade, 

with floats made by our friends. 

After the parade, we visit with my family some, go the carnival (it's just across the street from our house), and apparently take pictures of bugs that land on my uncle's hand. 

See? 

After that, we usually head back inside to cool down and relax. But this year, we instead headed to my brother's to go swimming with their family. And after that, we took our first family camping trip. More on that tomorrow.

This has to stop

Chad's out on a date again tonight. And not with Evan this time. This time it's with a girl. And she's gorgeous. She has huge blue eyes, wonderfully curly hair, full pink lips, and the sweetest smile you've ever seen. Plus, she's wearing a short pink skirt and a ruffly pink shirt, so she's got me in the feminine department. She does have a bit of a scuff on her nose, but even that doesn't take away from her looks ... especially since she declares it looks like she has sparkles on her nose.

I think I'm going to have to crack down on my husband's dating habit. Because I guarantee there's some hugging and smooching going on on his date tonight...

The 3rd of July

Our town has fireworks on July 3rd. I think this is so there's a built-in rain date (the 4th) and so people have the day off work after the late night of fireworks-watching.

This is the first year that all five of us have gone to watch fireworks. Evan had gone twice and liked it ok. Kendra went one year and was terrified. Laura hadn't ever gone because she's our thunderphobe, or at least she was until a few weeks ago. But this year, they all three said they wanted to go. They all three said they weren't going to be scared. They all three said they'd take naps that afternoon so they could stay up late. And, most surprisingly, those things did all happen!

Once it was getting toward dusk, we pulled out long pants and long sleeves to ward off the bugs and the dropping temperatures.

We hung out with Chad's parents (who were visiting us for the weekend) and my family while we waited.

We watched the nice display God put on in the sky.

He did a 

great

job!

Then once the manmade fireworks started, Kendra cuddled up on my brother's lap to ride out the booms. 

And Laura leaned into Daddy for protection. 

At some point Laura came over to my lap, and I took this picture. Later, when I put pictures on my computer, I realized that my nose found about 562 new freckles over the weekend.

I spent the time during fireworks snapping pictures with my camera, usually without looking at my camera.

The results were sometimes not so great,

sometimes odd yet somewhat cool, 

sometimes promising that a good picture would eventually come, 

sometimes decent,

and sometimes

spectacular.

Oh, and sometimes they turned out looking like an old man with an extremely bushy mustache.

Photo contest results

The 4th of July celebration in our town is a big deal. By far the biggest deal of the whole year. There's a parade and fireworks of course, but there are also [not always all of these every year] multiple meals, a carnival, a golf tournament, softball and volleyball tournaments, pedal tractor pulls and lawn tractor pulls, a 5k run and a fun run, a community church service, coffeetimes, a barbecue contest, and more. Plus, a photo contest. This is the first year I've entered the photo contest.

I've been sitting on this picture (not literally) for two years. It's Chad holding Evan and Kendra's hands, walking through the skywalk in Davenport. I love it, but I hadn't gotten up the guts to enter it in the contest before. This year, I did. It didn't get a ribbon, but I still like it.

This picture of Evan is from this spring, and I love it! Possibly my favorite picture of him ever, or at least my favorite one recently. It didn't get a ribbon either, but I still love him. 

This picture was from January on a ride to Chad's parents' house. As we zoomed past these deer during the beautiful sunset, I tried to grab my camera fast enough, but I couldn't. I asked Chad if he'd turn around so I could try to get a picture. He assured me the deer would be long gone, but he turned around anyway. And the deer were still there ... in the exact same position ... almost as if they were fake. And then I realized that there shouldn't be a fawn that small in January when there's a foot of snow on the ground. Last week, this picture won first place in its category. And I feel like I cheated since the deer were fake. But the sunset is still pretty. 

And my last entry was this picture of Kendra that I caught just a few days before the 4th of July. Few enough days that I couldn't order a print online and get it back in time. But Chad loved it and told me I had to enter it. I couldn't get a bubble picture this clear again if I tried. I know, I tried. Somehow, you can see Kendra's eye through the bubble without a bright light spot. Somehow, you can see a reflection of our garage, both right side up and upside down, without a reflection of me. Somehow, I let this little girl play freely instead of tackling her and snuggling her all day. This picture won 3rd place in its category.

Here's a closeup of the bubble. Or you can click on the image above to see it larger.

More 4th of July weekend updates to come soon...

Today's lessons

Lesson 1:
Three children can play happily for amazing lengths of time when they want to watch a movie and know they have to clean up toys before they can do that. The power of avoiding-cleaning-up has so far resulted in 5 1/2 consecutive hours of happy playtime.

Lesson 2:
When you have an empty Spinzels pretzels bucket, it's ok to put it on your head. When your sister has said bucket on her head and tells you you can pull it off, it's understandable that you'd do it. When your brother yanks the aforementioned bucket off your head with the fastest yank he can yank, it will not end well for your nose and forehead. A skinned nose is not a workable shape for a band-aid.

I blame the 80's

This morning, Laura put a white satiny, tulle-y dress-up dress. Evan said, "it looks like a dress from a wedding!" I told him that [my cousin's daughter] Elise, who we got most of our dress-up clothes from, probably wore it when she was in a wedding sometime. Then I added, "or maybe she got it from a friend who was in a wedding." To which Evan continued with, "or maybe she got it from a friend who got it from a friend..."

And now I can't get rid of "heard it from a friend who-oo-oo, heard it from a friend who-oo-oo, heard it from another..."

Stinkin' REO Speedwagon songs.

Don't like

I don't like that a bad 90 minutes can erase the good of the previous 8 hours.
The kids seem to have mostly recuperated from the 90 minute crab-a-thon.
If only the mommy could bounce back so quickly.

The extended (extended) warranty

Background: Before Chad and I were married, he had a [huge] stereo system. When he bought it, he also got the extended warranty on it. Right around the time of our wedding, the stereo died. We took it back to the store, and they gave us back the full amount of the extended warranty, the full amount of the stereo, and even the full amount of the sales tax. We used that money to buy a tv and a smaller stereo, and we were pretty excited by how it all worked out. We also opted to buy the extended warranty again.

Fast forward to this morning about 6:45...

Chad: Hey, how long have we been married?
Me: Why?
Chad: Just answer. How long have we been married?
Me: 12 years, which you know. Why?
Chad: So our tv probably isn't under warranty anymore?
Me: Why?
Chad: Because it blew up.
Me: It blew up?
Chad: Yep. I turned it on, there was a boom, it started whistling, and it was smoking.
Me: Is it still smoking?
Chad: I unplugged it. I'm going to check on it again though. Oh, and it smells like formaldehyde. But, you're pretty sure our warranty didn't cover 12 years, right?
Me: Yep, pretty sure.

Weekend ... the teaser

Sometime soon (theoretically), I'll post a recap of our 4th of July weekend that included family, a photo contest, fireworks,

and our first ever family camping outing.