life, love & laundry
two special days
Saturday was the 12th Independance Day that Tony and I have spent together….the anniversary of the day we met. It’s always a special day, full of activity with a side dish of romance. I wasn’t sure how this holiday would turn out given the insane intense heat and sun and lack of A/C in our van. But it was, surprisingly, perfect. One of the best 4th’s in recent memory.
We made it to the parade which wasn’t quite as intense as last year thanks to a slight breeze.
{I altered Addy’s Old Navy t-shirt into a halter-dress and made her really cute hairties. dress just turned out ok but hairties were awesome}
The kids scored tons of candy and we were reminded of exactly why we need to move out of this crazy area when most of the parade was crazy Tea Party folks (and by crazy I am not referring to those who hold the ideals that the Tea Party ‘movement’ was created based on – I actually only saw ONE of those people among the hundreds of TP folks.) who carried signs like this:
and this:
Yeah there is nothing that makes a parade better than a bunch of crazies comparing the current president to the terrorist responsible for the worst day in recent US history. Super. Thanks. And although I don’t mind a little politicking and I’m all for free speach, I really REALLY don’t want ANY of it at my parades. I want floats and boy scouts and batons and marching bands and fire engines. Maybe next year they’ll up the ante and bring pictures of dead fetuses. That’s something to look forward to!! Apparently, though, the conservatives have more or less claimed this holiday as their own because this isn’t the first holiday that I’ve been bombarded by political messages while trying to enjoy some fireworks with my family but there has only been one year ever where the message wasn’t coming from the right. Honestly I really don’t want ANY of it to be part of my holiday, no matter what side it originates from. Sigh.
After the parade, we grilled dogs and then we went to the big community pool and lazed in the lazy river, flew down the huge water slide and got drenched in the big bucket. We also got to witness first hand what happens when a grown man yells to a lifeguard “There’s a snake in the pool!”. Fun stuff. Said snake was approximately 3″ long and looked much more like a worm than a snake. It was a Big Ordeal to fish him out and you’d think people’s very lives were at stake! I’m not afraid of snakes in general but I’m pretty sure this snake would have scared NO ONE. It was a newborn baby for goodness sake. Anyway we eventually left for another pool that had a diving board and spent a few more hours there. The water was sooo hot it felt like a hot tub, no exaggeration. It was significantly hotter than our home pool which feels like a bathtub. It was fun but not exactly “refreshing”. The kids had a blast jumping off the diving board!
We had a few hours to chillax at home before heading out for the fireworks. We decided to do another Family Challenge. This time we took up Jyl’s suggestion to do a “guess that food” blindfolded challenge. It was so fun and even Addy and Noah could participate (let me tell you, this was SERIOUS therapy for Noah). It was also way more difficult on my end since the teams all did so well and tied for every round. In the end the winning team, Team Monocellular Organisms, only won becuase they guessed peach while Team Elite guessed nectarine. SO CLOSE! The funniest answers came from Noah and Addy. They both did really well but Addy was SURE her graham cracker bites were marshmallows and Noah was sure his string cheese bite was a cherry and his vanilla yogurt (which he eats daily) was strawberry whipped cream (and was sure he had never tasted the yogurt in his life). Funny stuff.
The weather was only like a billion degrees by then instead of a trillion by evening so it was much more tolerable when we made our way out to the ‘works. They always do such a good show here and we had good seats this year. Even better than the fireworks was the time we spent as a family beforehand watching the stars come out, counting them, finding constellations and waxing philosophical. I’m so lucky to have such cool, nerdy kids who really love doing things like this.
Our drive home was the best drive in memory. We got out so fast and flew homeonly losing one child to sleep (and no it wasn’t addy who totally did not nap, was in the sun all day swimming and was still going 100mph by midnight). Usually we’d go home and do some fireworks and sparklers but we have an absolute ban on fireworks in our neighborhood this year, including sparklers. We live in the woods and it really is way more hot and dry right now than in past years so it was necessary. We were all pretty relieved to drop into bed by the end of the day anyway.
Today is another special day: Addy’s Referral-a-versary. Three years ago we saw her picture for the first time and fell in love. She knew it was a special day and watched her adoption video lots of extra times (one of her favorite parts is the photo of the cell phone when ‘the call’ came in). I hugged her extra tight. I think of all her special days this one is my favorite. It isn’t so emotionally loaded as other adoption-related days, for me. It is pure celebration of what a complete blessing it is for our family to have Addy in it.
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i totally thought your blog was gone and i was freaking out. so glad its here. i love how you altered her dress
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Wow, 3 years – how did that happen so fast?! Congrats!
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What an awesome 4th you had. And I agree, parades are supposed to be fun and entertaining, not political. (and I am a totally tea-party supporter!) I love what you did for Addy’s t-shirt dress. You are so creative!!
Happy Referral-a-versary! Love the picture of Addy holding her referral pic – so sweet!
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Happy referraliversary; your family is so fabulous. I am inspired and overwhelmed by your blog…I always think “we should do more stuff like they do” and …I never do. But I appreciate reading it! I’m in LOVE with that green dress she’s wearing!
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Sounds like a really, really awesome day. Happy Anniversary and Referral-versary! Those wrong food guesses are cracking me up. And three years, wow. Just so hard to believe!
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Thanks for the laughs!!! That first sign….
And congrats on all your special iversaries….
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