The "real" 4th of July party.

While the big party on the 3rd was massive amounts of fun, we also had a chance for a much smaller get-together with Heather and her family last night, on the 4th. It was good to get to spend time with just them, rather than mingling with a crowd of people - I sometimes consider her family just another branch of my own, I know them so well!

We arrived just before 5pm, and the boys played for a bit in the living room with Benjamin. Jack was excited to see that Ben had all of the same Little People® toys that we have... only we don't have them anymore because I *gave* them to Heather! Then the boys changed into swimsuits and all three of them climbed into the kiddie pool in Heather's backyard.

And they were silly. At some point in the playing, Benjamin dumped a package full of new water balloons into the pool, and the boys had them stuck all over their backs and chests. A.J. kept blowing them up and them letting them go. Jack began playing with a beer bottle, and they just had a good time. I hauled them out when it was time to eat, though A.J. was the last one out of the pool.

Heather had made grilled chicken, burgers and hotdogs, as well as fruit salad, orzo salad, beans and chips. It was delicious, and we ate in the backyard, which only tempted Benjamin to keep trying to get back into the pool. When everyone finished eating (we'd all been waiting on A.J. to get done!), we pulled out the balloons. Philip and I had spent over an hour filling about 125 water balloons earlier, and we'd brought them in a big tub to Heather's house. It's amazing how it takes so long to fill them, yet only a few minutes to use them all up! Everyone was laughing, and it looked like they had a fabulous time pelting each other with balloons (I was busy taking all the pictures).

Shane began unwrapping all the fireworks and grouping them into a certain order, and I got the boys dressed inside. Philip arrived then (he'd dropped us off and gone to work at Runza for a couple of hours), and he helped with the fireworks. Shane, Philip and Heather's brother DJ were in HEAVEN with all the fiery stuff. ;-) They began setting off several of the smaller, ground fireworks soon.

And what an ordeal THAT turned out to be! A while into it, Shane lit a firecracker, but it flipped over and was shooting out in all the wrong places. He ran off yelling, "Get out of the way!" and we all scrambled as quickly as we could. One of the booms went right between mine and Heather's chairs and hit the rental car just a foot or so behind us, and we were trying to get out of the way. Philip had taken off in one direction, and I was left to haul Jack from his chair and out of the way - I ended up dragging him by the arm (there wasn't time to explain) over the armrest of his chair, and it scared the poop out of him. When it was all over and we were all okay (and laughing by then), I held Jack for a while and apologized and explained that I was only trying to keep him safe. Heather's dad had been sitting way back on the front porch steps, and he joked that he'd "never seen [us] ladies move so fast!" ;-)

We moved the chairs further back, and the guys set off progressively larger firecrackers as the night went on. Philip sat down in the chair next to me at one point, and one of the larger rockets was shooting huge chunks of debris in the air. I was watching the sky to make sure we were far enough away, and I turned my head to follow a piece hitting the top of our van. In that split-second, Philip stood up to catch a piece headed straight toward me, but he missed. The chunk hit me on my upper thigh, through my jean shorts, and it HURT. I began bruising instantly, a purple haze showing up on my leg. Ouch.

And THEN, even later on, after I'd been watching from the safety of the garage for a good while, Shane began lighting some type of ground firework. I decided it was safe to move up close and watch - no sooner did I move up to stand next to Heather, than it began shooting sparks too far into the driveway. I had to jump hard and quick to miss being hit in on my bare legs (and I hurt my heel when I landed on it), but Heather wasn't so lucky. She took a spark in a not-too-good spot, and she did a really funny "hot-crotch dance" for a few moments. We all got a kick out of that, too.

We ended with some sparklers, and then it was time to come on home. We saw tons of fireworks in the sky on the way, and there were some really beautiful ones. We'd been able to watch the base fireworks show from Heather's house as well, and that was pretty neat (all the pretty without any of the traffic!).

It was a great holiday weekend. Good times, good food, good friends, good memories. :-)

( Whizbang fun! )

Lastly, in keeping with the tradition of last year's parting shot, here is this year's patriotic memento:


Flag and fireworks.
(This was a collaborative effort between Heather and myself. She had the idea, and I took the picture.)

(no subject)

Even though it's been about six weeks, it is sometimes very hard to believe that Pawpaw is gone.

Rac-a-roons.

I went to bed a few minutes after 2am last night, and I was having a pretty bad asthma attack at the time (Philip could hear me coughing from the office, and he brought me back my inhaler before I could even think about needing it yet). When I had just about hit the sleepy haze, I was awakened by Philip dashing into the bedroom. "Honey, are you still awake?!" I mumbled an answer, and he proceeded to giddily tell me that there was an entire family of raccoons in our back yard.

"Where are they?" I asked. He'd been taking out the recycling when he saw them heading toward the garden - a big mama raccoon and three babies. He threw a rock at them, and the mama skittered off across the street, leaving her babies behind. One dashed into the marigolds to hide, and the other two climbed up our little tree. He'd come inside to tell me.

"Go take pictures," I told him, and he was off. A minute later, I began seeing flashes of light through the bedroom window. He took a ton of pictures, and I was curious to see them this morning. Not many came out, but there were a few cute ones.

( See? )

Garden progress - first week of July.

When last we left off, the garden was coming along nicely, most of the plants having only been in the ground for about three weeks, and the seedlings just beginning to emerge. (It's worth taking a look before moving ahead in this post.)

What a difference a month makes!

Because Annie has been wanting to see, here are ( new progress pictures. )

You can see the addition of the "ugly fence" in these pictures, and you can also see the empty soda cans underneath the tomato plants. Neither seems to be working in keeping out the ground squirrels. The radishes have long since been harvested (over 6.5 dozen!), and I need to get out there and sow the second batch. I pulled the 7th-10th zucchini this afternoon, and there are tons more making progress right now. The lima beans are flowering now, so I'm sure we'll have babies there soon.

And that's about it. Everything is mostly established now, so there's no need for me to take weekly progress pictures anymore. :-)