Celebrating the 4th

The weekend of the 4th we took off to my parents house to relax and celebrate Independence Day. This was a much different 4th of July celebration for us because normally all of the family would be headed to the golf course where my dad worked for a pig roast and fireworks, but being that my dad doesn't work there anymore our schedule was wide open for whatever fun we wanted!

Saturday evening we relaxed with the family and ate some pizza. I was extremely disappointed with our pizza options: Chicken Alfredo and Spicy Italian Pizza. The Spicy Italian Pizza speaks for itself and if you know me and my gut then you know it did not go over well with me. And then there was the Chicken Alfredo Pizza, which was actually my choice to order. It was very plain and very white looking and it tasted like it looked...plain and white, and yes white has a flavor, just try this Chicken Alfredo Pizza and you'll know what I mean. It also had a powdery grit on top. Yum.

Sunday we headed to church and then spent the afternoon shopping. One thing I have learned about myself is that I am a very picky sales shopper. If I walk into a store and see a sign that says "60% off select items" but see no other sign defining which items are the "select items" on sale, then I will turn around and walk out. For me, the price has to either be posted on a sign right next to the item I want to buy or right on the tag. I walked in and then walked right out of both Gymboree and The Children's Place. However, I did buy about $70 worth of clothes that were on sale at Younkers. Josiah is now in 12 month clothes, and thankfully there is actually room to GROW into them. But I bet I'll be looking for 18 month clothes in a matter of months since he's growing so fast.

After shopping for a bit Andrew, Pops (my dad), my sister Rachel and myself headed to an I-Cubs game. I filled my stomach with even more junk and suffered for it later. If I wanted to order a fatty BBQ pork sandwich then I would have asked for a "fatty" BBQ pork sandwich. Well, I may not have asked for it specifically but I definitely got a side of "fat" with my sandwich, making my stomach gurgle and churn later. Then I decided to top it off with some old fashion nachos (you know, the cheese that comes out of some machine which probably has no trace of real cheese in it, plus a bag of chips). The game was actually really great! The I-Cubs played a great game, the weather was beautiful, I got a good view of the sunset on the downtown Des Moines skyline, and the fireworks were AWESOME! I love fireworks, one of my favorite parts of celebrating the 4th! We decided to make the I-Cubs game and fireworks a yearly tradition. I'm looking forward to taking Josiah to his first game next year.

Monday I got to sleep in since my mom was so wonderful and got up with Josiah. I woke up at 7:45 a.m. (yes, that is sleeping in to me! and it was awesome!) and took my merry time getting ready for the day. We headed to the parade a little late but found a shady spot to watch. I saw Brandon Routh (SUPERMAN) who was the grand marshal for the parade (I grew up in the same town as Superman). It was one of the better parades I've seen in my town in years. After relaxing a bit for the afternoon we headed to the park to check out the booths. I gave Josiah some bites of his very first snow cone! He loved it and I'm sure it felt good on his gums. I also played a round of Black Out BINGO. I lost, although I only had about 3 spots left on one of my cards!

All in all, the weekend was pretty good. I was grumpy at times because Josiah was teething most of the weekend and didn't always nap very well, which meant that mommy didn't get to nap either. At one point I started getting mad at everyone around me because I felt like no one was helping, when really everyone helped out quite a bit and I was just being a loser. So thanks family for dealing with me and helping out with Josiah!