Theme music

Yesterday I took my brood to an art museum. And a bookstore and the hot air balloons. But the funny story takes place at the museum. We were downstairs admiring the Impressionist paintings. When we finished browsing, (and by browsing I mean getting way too close to the centuries old paintings in their original frames, touching the artwork, and actually crawling THROUGH a sculpture, all of which resulted in the security guards actually tailing us the rest of the time we were there)- we got back into the elevator to come upstairs. The Pinkiest (4) pressed the button as she said "Lobby." Mr. Yuke (3) heard her and answered by saying, "Lobby? Well Lah-Bee damned!". Since "Well I'll be damned" is not a phrase either my hubby or I has ever used, I turned to Mr. Yuke stunned and burst out laughing.

I love this country. Yes, the government sometimes does things the least efficient way possible and wastes collosal amounts of money. And yes, sometimes the leaders of this country do stupid things. (If you don't vote you forfeit your right to find fault with them.) (If you voted for the loser, sorry. Lucky for you, the more stupid things the winner does, the less likely it is that person will get re-elected.) But all in all, this is a great land we live in. We live in a country where I can say the government sometimes does things the least efficient way. That is an amazing privelage. The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. Some years I like it even better than Christmas. Today was one of those years. It was a great day.

It started out pretty sucky actually. I had planned and been looking forward to going to the local fireworks display/concert and at the last minute (one week ago) discovered our plans had changed and we would be missing it. I was disappointed. A lot. I don't handle disappointment very well. But I thought at least we could go to the parade. Then last night my overly tired and fairly cranky hubby said that we weren't going to the parade. Normally if I want something badly enough I argue with edicts like that and then we go. He was however so tired that I just let it go. So this morning when I woke up I thought why get up? We aren't going to the parade. What is there to do? I struggled with this for a while. Finally I managed to haul my sorry self out of bed. I said a prayer that I could get over it and have a fun day. Boy did we.

My top 4 all went out and played in the pool with the neighbor kids. First they build a water slide into the pool by leaning the slide from the play structure against the porch with the bottom in the pool. Later they started playing water frisbee baseball, using the snow sledding disks filled with water as the bases. While they did this, Monster Truck (2) and I made homemade ice cream together. When it was ready, I made buffalo burgers from an animal my hubby actually shot his very own self and we all sat on the porch in the shade and ate Americana food. We ate ice cream and then started a soccer game in our front yard. Before we knew it, all the neighbor kids on our street ages 4-15 had joined in the game. Then my next-door neighbor came out in his driveway with his accoustic guitar and started playing while he watched our match. (He's talented so this was a good thing.) It was kind of surreal but my 4th of July actually had a soundtrack. I love that when I look back at this day I will have theme music as a backdrop to my memories. I went to find our 5 gallon bucket to fill with water for our fireworks display and discovered it was filled with like 50 squirtguns. So everyone got a water gun and started shooting each other. Then we did fireworks and gave out glow necklaces to all the kids in the neighborhood. It was a good day.