Fourth of July

Just finished up a long 4th of July weekend, actually I pretty much always make it a long 4th of July weekend by adding a day vacation which you can do easily unless the holiday falls on Wednesday, then you just take 2 days vacation and make it a REALLY long weekend.

The 4th was on a Friday this year so I took off Monday as I had a presentation I had to do on Thursday. I love long weekends in the summer, which probably explains why I have no vacation left, and am taking my vacation days pretty much as I get them.

We had a fabulous weekend, we started Friday with a neighborhood breakfast, which was lots of fun, and lots of good food. They invited neighbors that were outside the ward boundaries, which was really nice, so we can meet some new people, I think it’s one of the drawbacks of living in a largely LDS area, is that the ward boundaries really define who you get to know in the neighborhood. I’m sure the more socially adept are able to meet people outside the ward boundaries, but introverts like me are pretty lucky to even talk to people we see every week at church, so I like opportunities to meet new people where I don’t actually have to do any work.

We then headed up to the parade at about 10:00 in hopes of saving some seats for everyone, we sat down a blanket last year but didn’t get a chance this year, but luckily our usual seats right under the awning of the library (yeah shade!!!) were available. We of course stayed for the water portion of the parade, but were sad to hear about a couple of boys being injured during the parade. I really hope the city will continue with the water portion of the parade as that is what makes it fun and sets it apart from other parades, but I can also see the safety concerns. I guess the city council will meet and decide this week. Anyway we had a blast and of course Jake was amongst the wettest kids going home.

We then went pretty much right from the parade to Nikki’s for Austin’s birthday party, which was also a lot of fun. Nikki made a really cute cake, and the food (teriyaki chicken, veggie kabobs, salads, and fruits) was really good and hit the spot. I don’t actually remember seeing Jake the entire time we were there, so I assume he had a good time, and we even (with lots of advice and plenty of parental hovering) let the kids do some sparklers.

We then headed home for fireworks, I can’t remember a year in my life when I have missed fireworks, and I certainly don’t plan to stop now, plus I love fireworks, and so will Jake I swear he will. As I mentioned, we can see them pretty well (there is one tree that is starting to get too tall so we may have to start going over to the High School) from our yard. Rob and Jake fell asleep at about 9:00 but as I knew Jake would wake up Saturday morning crying because he didn’t see the fireworks, and because I didn’t want to watch them alone, I actually forced Jake to watch them (I let daddy sleep). I put out a blanket and pillows, and carried a sleeping Jake outside when the Lagoon fireworks (which we can also see) started, and kept poking him until all the noise woke him up. We then watched the Kaysville fireworks and then turned out blankets and watched a bit of Layton City’s fireworks, before Jake begged me to go back in and go to sleep. This is what I call "you will have fun darn it, or I will MAKE you have fun" parenting.

Saturday we wanted to finish getting in the new floors in the kitchen dining room, Rob said it would go faster if he had my help, but I think he probably fails to realize exactly how NOT handy I am. I “helped” for about 3 rows before Rob suddenly found that he could do it himself, and I figured I would be the most help if I got me, and Jake out of daddy’s way. So Jake and I went out and ran some errands, went to McDonald’s (and actually went in, instead of going through the drive through), and then came home and filled the pool, and had a water fight in the backyard. The new floors look really great, there are still a few finishing touches Rob has to do, but it looks really good and I love it, esp. with the new floor boards that we put in. The kitchen/dining room look completely different, and Rob has worked really hard getting this in, and has done an awesome job.

Sunday we went to church, but had no one in our Sunday School class, all the kids that graduated from High School in June are now “officially” young adults, and they SS presidency has asked them to attend that class, so we lost most of our class which is sad, hopefully some of the less active kids will start coming as otherwise we only have 2 kids in the class. Jakey had to give a talk again and he wasn’t nearly as excited about this one as the last one, apparently he wanted to just give the David and Goliath story as his official talk, and was highly disappointed that we changed subject. I wrote him a poem to give as his talk, and he also didn’t like the fact that we mentioned that he was 5 in one of the lines, he said to take that part out, which didn’t really work because um, I need the rhyme, so I finally bribed him that if he just gave the talk as mommy wrote it, we would do something really fun after church. He did great, so after church he held me to my end of the bargain, and we decided to get a hotel for the night as I was off Monday. So we headed out after church, got a room with a refrigerator, got some sandwiches, drinks, snack, and spent the day at the hotel, where we had the entire pool to ourselves. Between Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning, I think Jake spent about 9 straight hours in the pool, we had a great family keep away game, played Hulk (which involves throwing Jake across the pool a lot, my arms hurt the next day), and just hung out.

Monday we had breakfast at the hotel, ran some more errands, and then just spent the day recuperating from the weekend and getting ready to head up to Mom and Dad’s to watch Grandma while they spend the week up in Idaho. We will be there starting tomorrow until next Tuesday, so Jakey will have lots of trampoline time, cookie dough (grandma nicely makes cookie dough for Jake everytime we stay), and we would love to have visitors that are in town to come over and join us, but hope all that are going up to Idaho have a safe, and fun time.