The Fourth That Fizzled (A Little, Anyway)

We didn't do much on the Fourth of July.  We could have gone to a family party in Buffalo, but I didn't feel quite ready for that.  Even with distancing and masks, it just seemed...unwise?  There have been a handful of stories lately about families who spread the virus to a couple dozen people through parties, and even though this one was outside, it was concerning.  Probably harmless, but still concerning.  So we stuck close to home.  Because it was pretty hot, we spent much of the day in the A/C.  It was a Saturday, our usual take-out dinner night, so we finally ventured out to grab dinner--this time all of our individual choices (DiBella's sub for Craig, pizza from Uno for Jacob, and Popeye's for me and Carter).  Afterward, we got in a nice evening swim, though it was slightly awkward in full view of the next-door neighbors' party.  The neighbors moved in last fall, and while we haven't chatted at length with them, we haven't had any issue with them, either.  They've actually done a great job fixing up the yard considering it's a rental property, upgrading almost all of the flower beds.  They have four dogs living in a little house, and aside from them running into our yard periodically and barking at us when we walk in the yard, you'd otherwise almost never know they're there.  So overall not bad.

After our swim, we settled in outside for some tabletop s'mores.  We got to enjoy the neighbors' fun with fireworks!

The neighbors won a few more cool points when someone walked over to offer up some of their excess fun!  They gave the boys a couple boxes of those little snapper things that you throw on the ground to pop!  I remember doing them when I was about Carter's age or a little younger when at my grandma's house on the 4th.  We'd go over there for pool time and a picnic and then head down the road to the park by the river to watch the fireworks.  Such good memories!  These left a little bit of a mess, but they've never done them so they had fun finding out what they were all about!

The remains of the fun!

We continued to watch their display while we ate our s'mores...

Jacob likes his a little done...

My last one was a nice, toasty one!

The neighbors also offered up some "jumping jacks", which we set off in the driveway, and some sparklers!

Not sure what Jacob was doing, but it looks like some sort of interpretive dance!

Not a bad shot for a crappy cell phone camera!

All in all, it was a pretty decent evening to finish off a rather quiet and unexciting day!  Since we couldn't go to fireworks with everything canceled, we decided to torture the kids a bit and watch our honeymoon video.  I dug out the camcorder a while back and had been meaning to watch whatever randomness we had on tape from our honeymoon and beyond (basically for the three years until digital cameras and phone cameras became available), but when I remembered that we had footage of the 4th of July fireworks in Las Vegas from 2003, I put it on our to-do list for the day!  

The honeymoon footage was mildly entertaining (to us, not the kids--although there were moments they found intriguing).  It was weird to see 17-years-younger versions of ourselves.  I forgot just how much younger I looked.  It was crazy, actually.  We were young and in love and goofy.  I forget that I hadn't been on a plane for 15 years prior to that, so traveling to San Diego and Vegas was pretty special, and we were definitely taking it all in.  As a reminder, this was us back then: 

The first bit of the video was from our drive over to Coronado Island for dinner and sightseeing.  The next part was a tour around our hotel room:

I also showed off the view from our balcony, which was fantastic.

We didn't have footage from the zoo, but how cool was this?

We also went to Knott's Berry Farm on that leg of the trip.  Also no footage of that, but we had a really fun day, much of which was spent waiting for this crazy roller coaster to open after mechanical issues.  It did eventually, and it was a great ride!  This is my favorite dramatic shot from that stop...

Next up was Vegas, including the view from our room at Treasure Island...

We walked down the strip a bit and showed off the various hotels, tourist traps, shopping areas, and whatever else.  It was lovely then and it was fun to relive now.

I can't leave out seeing my first Chihuly permanent installation!

Someday I will get back and take a million proper pictures with my digital camera!

We had some footage of the conservatory in the Bellagio, which was full of hydrangeas, which I'd coincidentally had in my bridal bouquet...

We also had the full Treasure Island pirate battle!

We had a few minutes on the gondola ride at the Venetian...

…and some silly humor outside the Luxor, too.

This didn't make it to the video, but it's one of my favorite pre-digital pictures ever.  Notice the 96 degree temperature late at night!  This casino no longer exists, sadly.

Seeing those moments again was fun and brought back a lot of good memories of a much simpler time.  We weren't sure what else was on the video, but it was interesting as new things popped up.  We had footage of move-in day in our first apartment and Christmas time at that same apartment a few months later.  We had Christmas with Craig's family, including watching our then-18-month-old niece and nephew (now 18 years old) opening presents on Christmas Eve,  We also had Christmas with my dad's side of the family, including shots of my grandma's second-to-last Christmas, when the house we still gather in was still hers.  We also had an extended video of our niece and nephew's second birthday party, which also included a lot of beloved, departed family members.  

I sent this photo to our sister-in-law as a preview of the upcoming entertainment at our next family gathering!

There were so many emotions and thoughts I didn't expect from seeing that footage.  It definitely sinks in how quickly time passes when you see two-year-old kids who are suddenly high school graduates.  As okay as I've been with myself as I've aged, it was shocking to see myself at 24 in something more than just a picture.  It was definitely a different time, and my narrations definitely made me question how I ended up on TV that year!

After a quiet Saturday, Sunday was a pretty busy day.  I went for a bike ride in the morning, ideally before it got too hot but that happened anyway.  Gotta love the canal path.

A gaggle of geese!

After church and lunch, Carter and I went to visit a friend of mine to deliver one of the extra garbage cans I ended up with due to a company trying to make things right.  She has three puppies at her house right now, and they were super cute (though VERY high energy)!  We had fun catching up while the boys played video games.  Once we got home, the boys went in the pool and I went to Wegmans and made dinner.  After that I went on a very long video call with my oldest friend Heather.  We were overdue for a catching up, and a Zoom call made that much easier!  I'm surprised I still had a voice at the end of the day after so much catching up--times two!

Now we're into my next week of furlough, and despite a crazy heat wave we're trying to make some plans to do some fun stuff...so stay tuned!