Month: July 2010

One Year Ago… Part XIII

I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me and took off for my bed where the phone was laying. I saw the number and couldn’t help but grin to myself, “Hello?”

-Hey there, I was just driving down the road and couldn’t stop thinking about you.
-Yeah I just got out of the shower, can you hold on while I dry off real fast and put my clothes on?

Ha I was so giddy. I couldn’t help myself. You seriously hear stories of guys who say they’ll call and they don’t or the rule of not calling for so many days, or just a number of things, but boy this one was different.

-Ok Thanks, I’m back now, not dripping water all over the floor!
-No problem. I was just sitting here and wanted to hear your voice so I thought I’d give you a holler.
-Where are you?
-Somewhere on 60. At this point it all pretty much looks the same.
-I’m sorry you got out of here so late, that’ll have you driving late.
-I’m not sorry, I’m happy and I’ve made this trip so many times, I could make it in my sleep.
-Yeah don’t do that, you tried that once and it almost didn’t end so good for ya, please keep your eyes open at all times!
-Don’t worry I plan on it.

So we continued along talking until his dad started calling him to check on him. He said he’d better answer or his dad would think something bad had happened. I hung up the phone and I swear my small break down was over and all I could do was grin!

Of course the next day at work all the girls wanted to know how the date went. I was like it was great and with the grin they started laughing at me.

That next week was a lot of time spent talking through gtalk, texts and phone calls. He finally asked me again if I planned on coming to his sisters house on Saturday night for the party or not. I figured sure why not.

Thursday July 30th was my 26th birthday. A group of my friends, my parents and I went out to celebrate my birthday. On our way to town to eat dinner we kept texting each other. In fact he’d called me first thing that morning to be the first one to say Happy Birthday. My friend Jason beat him to it with a text at 12:40ish. But he was second. While at dinner I left my phone in my pocket on vibrate but after dinner headed back home the texting resumed. He wanted to know how my day went and where we ate dinner. What I had for dinner and how it was. Just anything and everything. Then he asked me if I liked Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yup, completely random.

Friday he used some vacation time and wound up coming home early. I had gone to town after work with my parents to have dinner at about 7:30-8ish and as we were headed home I got a text from him saying that he was in town and that he was going to his sisters house. If I wanted to come over tonight, there were a bunch of them just hanging around outside and to head over.

I went :).

I pulled into her driveway and he came to greet me at my car. Good thing because I didn’t really want to walk up to a bunch of strangers alone!

I was re-introduced to his mother, met his sister and her husband and then a bunch of people I’m still not sure if I know who they are to this day. Then, I met his daughter. She didn’t say much to me and ran off with the other kids but it made it all so real. I’ll admit it was kind of a little scary to me. It made it all real that he had a daughter, not that I didn’t believe him but still. I’ve never felt like I was “old” enough for a kid.

Anyway as the night progressed along I became a little more at ease with everything (new people and the fact he had a daughter) and I relaxed. I finally sat down next to his mother and his dog came and plopped down in my lap. She found a home for a good portion of the night.

Now I forgot to mention this part, when I got there that night my phone was on the verge of dying. I tried to plug it into my car charger but it wouldn’t accept it and charge so I went into his sisters house and plugged it into her computer to get some charge on it. A couple hours after I did that I was afraid I’d leave my phone there or something would happen to it (all the kids were in the house playing and I just didn’t want it broken) so I ran inside to grab my phone.

The kids had glow sticks out and were playing with them like light sabers. I walked into the living room and 2 little boys attacked me from either side with the saber. I played along and screamed and said, don’t hurt me! And I’ll never forget his daughter looked at the 2 little boys and said, “Don’t touch her, that might be my daddy’s new girlfriend.”

Wow that was a shocker! Me, I was still gunshy at this point and told him I didn’t want any kind of commitment or anything. I just wanted time to heal but that I loved being around him so we’d just go that route and see what progressively happened. He said he understood and to take my time. He was ok with that and then this happened. I was speechless.

I walked back outside leaned against a truck. He walked over to me and slid right in next to me and said, what’s up? I looked at him, grinned and said, would you like to hear what your daughter said? He looked at me with an Oh, Crap look on his face and said, um….. okay. I told him and I thought he was looking for a hole to go crawl in. I laughed and said, nah it’s okay, she’s fine! He apologized profusely and I told him to forget about it.

I finally went home around midnight or 1am. It was getting late and I was tired. He asked if I was still planning on coming to the party the next day and I said absolutely.

To be continued 🙂
See I give you short spells, I don’t want you to get bored reading it all at once 🙂

One Year Ago… XII

That awkward feeling didn’t go away. I kept telling myself, if I don’t go home, I’m never going to get there. All we keep doing is starting up a new conversation. Awe but look at those pretty blue eyes, do I really want to leave them… No Nicole don’t get ahead of yourself. 1 date, it’s not marriage. We were close, in fact he was hugging me because it was chilly out that night/er morning. And then, there it was, he kissed me. It was shocking, it was different, it was nice, so many emotions running through me. I even almost felt like I was cheating on the ex but I wasn’t with him anymore, it’d just been so long since I had kissed anyone other than the ex that it felt weird.

Yeah I think I was on cloud 9 that moment in time. I finally made it into my car and headed home. Before I left he asked me to come over to his mom’s house the next day before he had to go back to Kentucky. I was a little hesitant and told him I’d talk to him in the morning after I woke up. I really wasn’t sure when I’d get up. (yes I was finally sleeping at this point.) He said, well I’ll call you.

I went to pull out the driveway and I called him and told him that he had to talk to me all the way home so that for one I stayed awake and for 2 he knew I made it. And he did. Of course I went back to spastic talking about nothingness because again, I was back to being nervous. There was this great guy that had just kissed me. What was I supposed to do now? I got home, got off the phone, turned out all the lights went upstairs and crashed on my bed about 3:45 am.

The next morning around 10am I woke up to my phone ringing. I really thought that it was my alarm going off and I started grumbling trying to figure out how to shut the stupid thing off. After many attempts it dawned on me that it was the phone ringing and I proceeded to answer it in a groggy I just woke up voice.

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JCYF – County Fair Time

This week marks 6 year that I haven’t been able to compete at our county fair. I was in 4-H and my project was horses. I competed in the county horse show a few times but it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing… I show cutting horses, this wasn’t a show. It was western pleasure and halter, barrels and key hole… it was fun but never really what I wanted.

When I became a Freshman in highschool I joined FFA. My mom figured I’d stick with showing the horses, etc as my project but my dad and I had other ideas in mind. So I started out showing sheep. I had 2 market lambs and 2 registered Dorsets. I knew absolutely NOTHING about sheep other than they went blat. haha. That first year was a huge learning curve. Anything and everything that could possibly go wrong did. I was last in every class. My market lamb was almost too fat (there was a weight limit) to show at the district fair, my ag teacher slick seared (took all the wool) off my Dorsets, you aren’t supposed to do that! It was enough that went wrong to make a person Give Up! I was flustered, my parents were flustered, one of our other ag teachers couldn’t believe the one did it. It was a mess.

Most people would have quit. Not me… I must have a screw loose. Mr. Dillard raised and showed Hampshire Sheep (he’s the one that couldn’t believe the other teacher did what she did) so I pulled him aside at a fair and told him, “I want better. I’m not giving up, please help me.” That’s just what he did. He got me in contact with a wonderful woman in Buffalo that raised and showed Dorset sheep. My parents and I loaded up and headed her direction. I wound up buying 4 more Dorset Ewes from her. In the mean time my dad and I came up with a couple crossbred ewes also.

In FFA you can show up through the 4th November after you graduate which for most people turns out to be about 21 years old. You can bet, I was one of them. I never gave up. I learned how to “fit” sheep, I got some good sheep and I started winning. Did I always win, Nope, but hey that’s part of it. I developed the attitude I wanted to do better than I did my previous time out.

By my last year showing which was 2004, I made a come back from that first year. It was an outstanding year. I never asked for what I got but I’ll never give it back either. I walked away from our state fair with Grand Champion Dorset Market Lamb (that I raised I’ll have you know), Grand Champion Dorset Ram and Grand Champion Dorset Ewe. I kicked butt!

I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the showing. Most people ask why I didn’t go on to show in the open (adult) shows but it’s not the same. I met so many great kids and we formed bonds. You have absolutely no idea what kind of great kids are out there until you watch kids jump in and show other people’s animals as if they were theirs, sheep people jump in and show hogs or cattle, cattle people showing something they are unfamiliar with… PC and I will be going out tomorrow night to partake in some of the fair festivities and take his daughter out to see the animals. I can only hope, maybe someday she’ll be a interested in showing an animal and I can help pass on the wisdom and enthusiasm.

Missouri State Fair Grand Champion Dorset Ram & Ewe 2004
Missouri State Fair Reserve Champon Dorset Ewe 2003
Being in FFA even made me come out of my shell and run in Queen Contests.
My Senior Picture. I had to devote one to Official FFA Dress
Market Lamb I showed in 2000. I was Grand Champion Market Lamb with him at the District Fair in 2000. His name was JP

Peace, Love, & County Fairs

Wedding Invites

So the age old question, how far before the wedding do you send your invitations… I found on a couple different websites that if you are having it catered 8 weeks prior to the wedding. Well technically we are having it catered but not a meal, it’s more of Large Finger foods, appetizer type things. Since our wedding is at 11am we figured after we’d have food, we don’t want them suffering from hunger pains. Well Sunday July 4th was 8 weeks exactly. Our wedding is September 4th.

So that means I really should get cracking on sending my invites out. I’m just afraid sending them out way to early people will forget about me… but i guess we’ll see.

Then the decisions came about what invitations to purchase. The company I work for actually has a printing service all of its own and they do excellent work. And they don’t try to make money off employees, I believe we get it at cost, or maybe a little more. I’m not 100% sure. So basically I could have them design an invite for me and then print it or I could have someone else design it in photoshop and then they’d print it. They are easy going.

Well we thought about going with the standard invites. A lot of people look at them, might stick them on their fridge until the day of so they remember and then toss them, or you have people like me, I have most all invites I’ve ever received. I was keeping them around for ideas. Well we pondered for a while and then saw these on line. I fell in love. They aren’t anything like I’ve seen before. The guy who did our engagement photos also works for the company and actually works with my mom, so my mom did a mock up of the invites and then Taylor did them in photoshop for us. I love them. If no one wants to keep them, hey whatever, that’s their prerogative but me, I love them. I’ve never seen anything like it. He sent me screen shots in Adobe reader. The top part is the outside. The far right is the front, the middle is the back and the far left is the inside. Then on the bottom side the one of us looking at you is on the left side as you open it up, the middle is well, the middle and the right is on the other side.

I was going to print labels and decided why waste the time and money so we decided we’d just print the addresses right on the envelopes. Well that back fired too. I was getting so frustrated the other night because it wasn’t working and it was messing up my envelopes that I said screw it and started handwriting all the addresses. I’m about 3/4 of the way done. I don’t have terrible handwriting. If I had a calligraphy pen it’d look pretty close… haha. So anyway I just thought I’d share.

We have to sit down with my mom at some point and go through the details still for the wedding. It’ll be here before I know it… 58 days… although the tracker at the side says 57 days… who knows. At least we have a place to live after the wedding and it’s coming together nicely! Whew one less worry!

Peace, Love, & Invites 🙂

One Year Ago… Part XI

I knocked on the door and was greeted by the cutest little Boston Terrier bouncing off the screen door. Then I heard his voice holler at me, “Come on in. You’re Early.”

“Yeah but I didn’t speed.” I still don’t think

“I’m almost ready. I didn’t expect you that soon. I figured I had more time.”

“Well we have to drive to Springtown.”

“Where?”

“That’s what we always called it in college. Anyway it takes an hour.”

“Um… it takes about 45 minutes from here….”

“No it doesn’t.”

Yes that continued on for a while. So when he was finished getting ready I had to razz him about a girl being early and ready to go before a guy. Then we went and got in my car.

Talk about nervous. And when I get nervous, I have a tendency to ramble. I will talk about anything and everything and sometimes it’s nonsense. I think I proceeded to talk about the CD playing in my car. I know lame right… So then I started talking about the photos that a friend of mine and I took earlier that spring. We thought it would be fun to be “models” so we started taking photos and posing for pictures. I had him pull out my laptop from the back seat and told him to open up the folder and look.

Another advantage to me driving is I knew my way around town. And he was right, we made it in 45 minutes. So we had lots of time to kill so I proceeded to drive him around town and show him all the places I lived and the ever popular “art” in this person’s yard. It is a meat cleaver carved in the top of a tree.

It finally got time to head to the south end of town where the restaurant was and again, knowing my way, I made it in excellent time. I pulled into the parking lot and sat there and texted my friends wondering where they were. They were about 15 minutes behind us. Once they finally pulled into the parking lot and parked, we all got out and the introductions started. Kalem & Evelyn were excited to meet this guy I wouldn’t shut up about. Jason was fine either way, Josh, didn’t care to meet this guy at all. We proceeded into the restaurant and met up with the rest of the group.

The waitress came around asking what we wanted to drink and who was on whose tab. We’d never talked about if he was buying mine or not and I was prepared to buy my own when he spoke up and said I was on his ticket. Ok no pressure on my part. I think that actually made me even more nervous. To me that made it an official date. I guess I really thought this was just 2 friends meeting up to reminisce about old times… and now I was on my first date in forever. Dinner went great!

At the end of Dinner Evelyn said we needed to go to the mall. Debs was having a sale on dresses. I grinned and Kalem goes, oh she wouldn’t make him go with all of us. I grinned right back and said,” Oh really?” Then I looked at him and asked if it would be ok? He said that’s fine and Kalem rolled his eyes. It was official we were headed to the mall, shopping. The J’s, Kalem & Evelyn got in Jason’s car and we got back in mine and off to the mall we went.

Once at the mall he struck up a conversation about electronics or computers or something with Kalem & Jason. Cha-ching, that’s the in key right there… know about technology 🙂 with those guys anyway. After we made our purchases at Deb off to Dillards we went. Evelyn had a dress there she wanted to find and purchase for a cruise. Josh’s foot was hurting him so he lagged behind, but he lagged behind for more reasons than that.

After we made all the purchases at the mall we could we parted ways and the two of us headed to my friends Jamie & Brian’s so they could meet him too. Yes all my friends wanted to meet the guy I wouldn’t shut up about. We were there until around midnight when we finally decided we needed to head home.

We made it home in great time. When we got there, his mom was home from work. We sat in my car and chatted for at least an hour.

So now it is 2am and I’m still at his house. I was getting tired but at the same time got my second wind. We got out of my car to say good night. It was so awkward. There was this funny tension between us, you know the end of a date, do you say nice knowing you and leave? Well this has been fun, I’ll call you, we should do it again sometime… what? or do you kiss or hug or walk away… I hate the awkwardness. Especially since I hadn’t been there in ages.

So instead of ending it, we prolonged the inevitable and continued to talk. Go figure… LOL. At about 3am I realized I was exhausted and I really did need to go home and go to sleep. I proceeded to try and leave again. This time I was a little more serious. Plus that late in the night or that early in the morning, however you look at it, I was COLD! So that brought us closer together. He said he had extra body heat so we proceeded to hug. Hey, he kept me warm, I didn’t care! 🙂

Ok must go home, back to the awkwardness!

How will this evening end?

Guess you’ll have to come back again to find out 🙂 I know I’m mean but to be continued.

What Day is it??

I seriously keep thinking it is Thursday today. I think maybe I’m secretly hoping it’s Thursday… who knows… Everyone keeps telling me it is Wednesday though… ugh! That means I’m going to seriously not like tomorrow like usual. I’m not a big fan of Thursdays. They are just a tease that it isn’t Friday!

So yesterday I shared that I have a scar on my arm from my purse a year ago. I’m still not exactly sure how that happened! It was the weirdest thing! I was at my friends the J’s and talking and went to zip my purse and zipped my arm into the zipper. It HURT! Plus at first I was holding my purse up with the skin zipped in. Don’t ask how it happened because I’m seriously not sure but it hurt none-the-less. But I took a picture of the scar on my arm this morning with my trusty iPhone just to share that there is still a scar there.

Do you see it in this picture??

Well you see that mole, that isn’t it, but that mole is halfway between my wrist and my elbow…

So I circled the scar. See that… It’s not a real big scar but it is skin discoloration that wasn’t there until the purse bit me.

Now how the heck do you catch the fatty part of your arm, your right arm, and you are right handed… in your purse zipper? If anyone can figure this out, please tell me.

I got another Award!!! Yey!

Of Course, there are rules to this one too:

  • Thank the person who gave you the award.
    Dancy is Great! Thank you so much for the award. If you haven’t checked out her blog you should! It’s Great! She’s getting married in September just like me!! I love reading about her wedding planning!!
  • Share seven things about you.

Oh boy 7 new things different from yesterday…

  1. I’ve always wanted to do something CRAZY with my hair but when I go to the hair cutting place (LOL) I usually go for the same do…
  2. I bought my car 2 weeks after getting my steady job… not the brightest move I’ve ever done. I’m close to paying it off, early!!
  3. My engagement ring was my grandmothers wedding ring. My wedding date was my grandparents wedding date. (Yes I miss them so I feel I’m honoring them this way)
  4. I have a degree to teach High School Agriculture… I don’t do that….
  5. I want to visit all 50 states, I’m at 23 right now.
  6. I always stop and pick money up off the ground whether it is a penny or a $5 bill
  7. I shock some of my co-workers when they say a first name of an employee that works at a branch and I can tell them the last name, their branch number, the city and state of the branch and sometimes even their job title. I work for a fortune 500 company and we have 133 branches around the US…. I think I need a life…

Whew that was difficult!I have so many that I follow and most of them are older, not recent finds….

  • Let your nominees know about the award!
    Done! 🙂
So yesterday I also told you my toenails were painted like flags… I just had to share. Photo quality= NOT GREAT, taken with the iPhone but still I love them!

I did them myself. I got bored last summer and played around with it and loved it so re-did them this summer for the 4th! Boy my toes look fat!

Only thing I did different this year from last is I didn’t put the “stars” or white dots in to represent the stars. PC told me they looked fine without.

Peace, Love, & Blogger Awards!

Woohooo I got another one!!!

So I have Upper Respiratory Infection… or that’s what they think anyway… it could be a summer cold but all I can tell you is I feel like crap! I would so love to be sleeping right now! My ears hurt so bad from this, yesterday I wanted to cry but if I cried then my nose would run and I’d have more issues so instead I watched, “Julie & Julia.” Well first I guess I should say I finally get to claim I saw the movie, “Eclipse” in theaters! It was by far the best of the 3. Now it makes me want to finish the book. I’ve been reading on the book over a year now. Book 2 was so slow in my opinion it burned me out… So then we came home and watched “Julie & Julia.” I had dreams all night that food was attacking me. I’d wake up, move, go back to sleep and the food was back. Kind of a scary feeling!

We also saw “Grown Ups” in theaters on Sunday. Very good movie! It was hilarious! Adam Sandler never lets you down!!

I got another award from The Green Eyed Lady. If you haven’t been to her blog, you should check it out!!! She’s fabulous Daling!!!So the rules with this one, tell 10 things about yourself and pass it along to 5 people!

1. I go by my middle name. People always ask why, but I always have, it wasn’t my choice. My opinion, don’t name your kid one thing and have them go by a middle name, it’s confusing as all heck!

2. My wedding is in 60 days

3. My toenails are painted like flags right now.

4. I washed my car yesterday so it rained yesterday… I swear it happens every time!

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Woohooo I got another one!!!

So I have Upper Respiratory Infection… or that’s what they think anyway… it could be a summer cold but all I can tell you is I feel like crap! I would so love to be sleeping right now! My ears hurt so bad from this, yesterday I wanted to cry but if I cried then my nose would run and I’d have more issues so instead I watched, “Julie & Julia.” Well first I guess I should say I finally get to claim I saw the movie, “Eclipse” in theaters! It was by far the best of the 3. Now it makes me want to finish the book. I’ve been reading on the book over a year now. Book 2 was so slow in my opinion it burned me out… So then we came home and watched “Julie & Julia.” I had dreams all night that food was attacking me. I’d wake up, move, go back to sleep and the food was back. Kind of a scary feeling!

We also saw “Grown Ups” in theaters on Sunday. Very good movie! It was hilarious! Adam Sandler never lets you down!!

I got another award from The Green Eyed Lady. If you haven’t been to her blog, you should check it out!!! She’s fabulous Daling!!!

So the rules with this one, tell 10 things about yourself and pass it along to 5 people!

1. I go by my middle name. People always ask why, but I always have, it wasn’t my choice. My opinion, don’t name your kid one thing and have them go by a middle name, it’s confusing as all heck!

2. My wedding is in 60 days

3. My toenails are painted like flags right now.

4. I washed my car yesterday so it rained yesterday… I swear it happens every time!

5. People have mistaken my last name for a first and last name before… yeah I don’t get it…

6. Our house number had to have been a Hispanic families because we keep getting people calling talking in Spanish and I don’t know that much 🙁

7. I have a scar on my right arm where my arm got caught in my purse zipper a year ago… don’t ask, I don’t know….

8. I have a scar below my lip from where I bit through my lip as a 2 year old… I fell forward…

9. I’m about to become a step-mom… I got my walking, talking, potty trained daughter and I don’t have stretch marks! Yey 🙂

10. I feel old… my 10 year class reunion is in 2011.

Now to pass this on to 5 lovely ladies:

Teenage Bride
A Small Town Kind of Life
Gizzards & Calf Fries

In Every Good Love Letter There’s a Soldier and his Girl
A Farm Wife’s Life

And I’ll leave you with this, it is 8 til 1pm here and in Afghanistan where some of my friends are it is 10:23pm… yup they are 10 1/2 hours. Yeah they are half hours… I think it’s weird too!

You know the saying Time Flies when you’re having fun… well Kermit the Frog says Time’s fun when you’re having flies 🙂

Peace, Love, & Time

One Year Ago… Part X

As per usual, when something you are excited about and looking forward to is coming up, something inevitably always goes wrong. So you must be wondering what went wrong this time… I got a silly summer cold. Yup, you read that right, I got a summer cold the week of dinner club, the week of hanging out with this long lost friend. I’m not one who usually goes to the doctor when I’m sick. I usually just let it run its course and proceed on. I’ll sometimes take over the counter meds just so I’m not completely suffering but I usually just tough it out. Not this time. I didn’t want to cancel. I didn’t want to wait for my next chance to meet up with him. He lived in Kentucky, I mean seriously, how many chances would I get or how often??

So I did what any normal girl would do, I found my old high school year books and looked up his picture. I had to remember what he looked like! Yup, check, he looks like what I remembered from way back when… oh wait, those were from way back when. Well you get the picture, right? 🙂

The day before “the big day” he was able to take a vacation day and come home a little earlier than normal. He got in around 7pm. We talked and texted the whole way (I sure hope he wasn’t texting while driving!!!). I didn’t realize he was going to be in so early so I went over to the J’s house to hang out and help Josh bake a cake. We were texting all through this. He was sending me pictures of shirts he had and pictures of him in a cowboy hat and all kinds of pictures. I think I sent him pictures of the cake I baked.

So the day came, July 25th. I woke up that morning and did the normal morning ritual of going to town with my mom. I’m not really sure we set out on a mission that day but we headed that direction non-the-less. While in town, of course I was watching the time. I had to get home, get my hair fixed, make-up on, and dressed before 4pm. That’s when we had to leave to go to dinner. I volunteered to drive because he left his convertible top down all night and wouldn’t you know, it rained.

While in town I looked at my mom and said, “We should go visit Dotti.” Dotti is the Elizabeth Arden make-up rep at Macy’s. She always loves giving me a make-over and I figured, hmmm… maybe we’d be lucky and she wouldn’t be busy. Dotti hooked me up! I had beautiful make-up! Then we ran home and my mom decided to fix my hair for me. I then got dressed and I was ready to go.

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Whew What a 4th!!!

So this was the debute of our house to PC’s side of the family. Talk about a nervous wreck. Of course growing up, we were usually the ones who went places, not had people to our house so it was a little nerve wracking for me. He was all calm, cool and collected. Grrrr ;). Once the day actually hit I calmed down, A LOT! The house looked great which was exciting! Now that the 4th is over we’re going to focus on getting the office ready and working on our bedroom plus moving the tan couch and chair over to the house from my parents.

The funny thing is it rained. We actually had our 4th party on Saturday the 3rd so in case anyone had to go to work on Monday they weren’t out until the crack of dawn. Of course the weather forecasters (which I want to be by the way) called for rain on Sunday the 4th. Yep, you guessed it, no rain on the 4th but we did however get rain on the 3rd, all afternoon. There was a 50% chance. I’ve seen us be in a 90% chance and not get a drop. See I want to be a weather forecaster! So what did we do, we partied on! We put all the chairs under the car port and it wasn’t lightening or thundering so we jumped in the pool and played in the rain. It was GREAT! A little chilly but that’s ok, we proceeded on to the hottub when we got to cold!

Our lovely array of food!

PC’s cousin is a paramedic and she was on duty. They came out to eat but I’m sure we got lots of wonderings from passersby. In fact when the few friends we have that aren’t in his family came we had to explain. They were worried we’d already had an accident. I really bet the neighbors wondered what happened when they got called away and took off out our driveway with lights and siren running!

This is the wreath I made for the occasion. It’s actually there permanently so that it can be changed up for the different seasons, holidays with flowers. One of PC’s aunts asked if I was the “crafty” type person. I grinned and proceeded to tell her no 🙂

I was playing around with the settings on my camera… I want to learn to take outstanding photos! The smoke on the smaller ones didn’t help me so I got some shots like this 🙁

This is PC’s nephew playing with a sparkler and them setting fireworks off behind him.

I thought this was cute b/c it is Dill Pickle still but he’s walking so you can just catch a glimpse of him in the sparkler.

This was just cool in my opinion.

I liked this one too honestly!

I actually got a ground one where it wasn’t covered by smoke.

yeah your guess is as good as mine here…. 🙂

We finally started to get into the big fireworks of the night.

Again a big one 🙂

I almost didn’t get this one in the picture but what made it I loved!

I’m getting better right 🙂

One of my faves!

I hope you all remember what this day is truly about, the freedom of our country. And freedom doesn’t come free, it comes at a price. I hope you thanked all those who are currently fighting and those who fought in our past for our freedom! Hope you all had a safe and wonderful 4th of July!

I put another chapter of my story up, my opinion, it’s one of the more boring but sometimes details are necessary!

Peace, Love & Freedom and those who fight for our freedom!