The 4th

Ok, so I am beginning to be a rotten blogger, and even crappier family event picture taker! What's wrong!??! Oh wait, I know, I've been doing photography non-stop! Which don't get me wrong, has been a big huge blast and my dream come true....BUT that means that when I do get a spare minute with my fam, I'm not the camera crazy girl I used to be. SAD. Plus I think I have a case of the blogging blahs. I've heard about those, and I thought it would never happen to me. But it has. I am blogging like once a week now, almost like a regular person! Yikes!

A-NY-WAY.

We had a pretty good 4th. We went to Richfield, which I have concluded has the BEST celebration in pratically the entire state. I got like 4 hours of sleep the night before, so I was basically an ornery zombie person. It sucked a lot because the 4th of July is almost my favorite holiday! Or used to be, till I grew up!! Why does that have to happen?? Nothing is the same ever again. Traditions die down, the excitement and anticipation disappears, and before you know it, you're the old person complaining about the parade being too early or the park being too crowded. Oh, sad sad times. I don't want to think about that anymore!!

All those things considered, it was still a good day. Kind of. Well. The middle of it was almost as sad as that last paragraph.

We started bright and early at the parade. Which, it could be my old age, but I swear it's gone down-hill. Jaxon had a blast of a time. He was thoroughly entertained through about all of it. He was a little frightened at the loud sirens that go off with no warning, but other than that, I think he loved it.

After the parade, we dilly-dallied at the city park until we just couldn't take it any longer. (like 15 minutes). Waaaaay too many people.

Then I did this:

took family pictures for my Aunt Kenda.

Then we went here:

jax & I were too frightened to move a muscle. (I tipped over a kayak once, not fun.)

I don't have many pictures of this particular part of the day because of what happened next. Some very mean, dark clouds started surrounding us. Then it started to rain. Then it rained harder. And even harder. Then I was pretty sure I hadn't seen that much rain for at least 10 years. But, then it got worse. The rain started to freeze into sleet. Then, the sleet froze into hard little balls of ice. Then, before we knew it, we were trapped in our cars for about an hour while it hailed so violently, I thought the windows would break and we would all die. To make matters even worse, my camera happened to be in the car I wasn't. So, no cool pictures will help tell my story or show you how dreadful the amount of ice surrounded us that day. It was actually kind of cool. But not on the 4th of July. Not when it was a perfectly happy, sun-shiney day. Fishlake was definitely NOT the place to be on July 4th , 2009. At least we got about 10 minutes worth of canoeing in. Andrew was bummed because he got zero fishing time. Sad, sad story.

We left that dreadful place to come back to some of this:

A train ride. Yes, that is my mom driving that tractor and pulling this little train that my Grandpa made!!

THEN:

FIREWORK TIME! Jax thought that was pretty cool. His face says it all.

Tanner (my bro) got a little Jealous of the love, so we included him in for a bit.

Jaxon looked like this for about have of the firework show. The other half was spent trying to run off. Apparently it wasn't enough entertainment.

It was a fun and memorable 4th. I hope everyone had a fun one too!!