Busy July, part 1

The problem with working retail is you usually end up working on holidays and weekends. With Erik's schedule, we end up with three weekends free and then three weekends when he's working. We lucked out that July happened to be a (mostly) weekend-free month. This means we've packed a ton of activities into those weekends. That also means my blogging of those activities has been very sub-par since activities I usually save for the weekend have been smooshed into the rest of the week and blogging is low on the list. In an effort to document our summer fun, I'm finally starting the blogging...

Our 4th of July weekend was jammed packed and super fun. On the 1st, we hit up the Cache Valley Cruise In. I'll be honest: it's gotten to the point we're reluctant to take Lily anywhere in public, especially where there will be lots of people and lots of new things to see. She gets distracted easily and won't listen to us, and it's almost always a fight to get her out of there. But she was soooooo amazingly good that I'm almost starting to believe she might turn out a productive member of society after all. Before we left the house, we told Lily she couldn't touch any of the cars at the car show because they were very expensive. When we met up with Derek and Daxton, she was sure to remind them, too. Several times. But it worked. She was very good about not touching the cars, which was a good thing since several of them had very threatening signs about fingerprints. They had an area with kid games, and she patiently waited her turn (mostly) and left when we said it was time. I almost didn't know how to leave an activity without carrying a flailing toddler. It was very nice!

That night, we grabbed some KFC and headed to our reserved spot for the Cruise In parade. Erik had worked until midnight the night before, so he dropped a blanket off in front of the tabernacle on his way home. He snagged a spot in front of a tall building thinking we would be the first to get shade. Unfortunately, he didn't take into account the angle of the shade...and as the sun was setting, we sadly watched our shade cover the people to the left of us, leaving us squinting and sweltering. He'll know better next year. :) It was still fun and continued our tradition...so that's what matters.

 On the 4th, we woke up to ominous rain clouds, and since our plans included a trip to the aquatic center, we were a little bummed. Lily especially since we'd already told her our plans. But we did a little errand running to keep her distracted and grabbed some do-it-yourself fireworks. We finally decided a few gray clouds weren't going to keep us from going swimming, so we decided to risk it. Good thing we did because apparently everyone else was just as leery of potential rain. The pool wasn't nearly as crowded as we expected and the clouds made it a little cooler. Timothy enjoyed just sitting in the water but held on for dear life most of the time. He decided he'd had enough after one too many splashes. But Lily's our little fish and had a great time showing off the skills she learned from her swimming lessons this year and even went down the slide a couple times. We wrapped up swimming with some ice cream and went home to get ready for fireworks.

We usually head to the Hyrum soccer field for the festivities, but the traffic afterwards is always so bad that we decided to try a different approach this year. Instead, we parked at the high school and just hung out in the bed of the truck with our pizza. We ended up with a great view, and the truck bed kept the kids contained. And we were on the road in no time. It may become our new viewing spot.

Definitely a busy weekend, but so much fun.