An 18th of July Reflection on the 4th of July

I must say we had a pretty rockin' (or rocketin') 4th of July this year. I dragggggged Aaron to the Stadium of Fire fireworks show on Saturday. Annie liked it for 5 minutes, but quickly became less impressed with each boom. I seemed to be the only one who enjoyed it, so maybe I'll take one for the team next year and not make everyone go.

Anyway...the fireworks weren't the fun part. On Monday, we convinced 3 of Aaron's fantastic siblings and one sibling's awesome roommate to come down to see us. The first very exciting thing we did was go ice-blocking. The last time I went ice-blocking was with Aaron before we were even dating. I totally wanted to flirt with him the whole time, but I tried not to act too interested. This time, I felt okay about flirting.


We had several races and one grand championship which (I think) Shauna was the grand winner of. Hooray, Shauna! (or Angela, of you were the winner.) It was great.





We'd often ask Annie if she wanted to ride down the hill with Mom or Dad or her aunties. She was pretty against the idea. It reminded me of when Aaron went tubing while Annie and I watched from the boat. Annie cried and yelled, "Daddy" the whole time Aaron was out on the water. She knows when things look dangerous--dangling behind a rapidly moving vehicle in the water; going down a steep incline on a perilously small block of ice. She's pretty smart for a not-even-two year old.


After our ice-blocking adventure, we came home and had American food like hot dogs, watermelon, chips, sugared beverages, etc. Then Alan had the brilliant idea to make a hot air balloon. He's an expert on all flying things, so we went for it. Here's the pictographical account of Launch #1:






Launch #2:





At the end, our balloon went down in a burst of patriotic flame. How appropriate. It was a good day and a GREAT use of all that old wedding gift tissue paper.