Adventures in Babysitting Part II~ July 4, 2009

To start the holiday weekend off, we made the 1 hour trip to my hometown for the big Fourth of July parade. Here is a picture of my two nieces, my two nephews and my grandson enjoying the parade and waiting for the "candy throwers."

Liz (3), Katie (6), Tiegen (5), Grayson(3) & Christian (4)

After the parade, we had a picnic lunch and then headed to my sister Connie's house to pick up my niece, Shelby for the weekend. We came home for a couple of hours and the kids played in CJ's wading pool, sliding down the slide into it. Shelby had a great time doing that. Next, we went into P-town for the festivities there. They had kid's games and a "jumpy thing" set up. What fun!

I caught a picture of my grandson, CJ while he was airborne! Shelby is in the back in the red.

Here's the two of them having a blast! It wasn't easy getting Shelby out of there, she loved it!


Later on, we had a pork chop dinner, and there was karaoke. While we were waiting to sing, I asked Shelby if I could take her picture. This is her being dramatic and posing. What a nut!

And finally, on to the fireworks!! Here is Shelby, CJ and "Uncle Grandpa Ray" as we were calling him. He's Uncle to Shelby and Grandpa to CJ...so it all works out. Ray had been wearing a hat earlier in the day...thus, the hat-hair.



A few shots of the fireworks...they were pretty good, as usual here in P-town! They've been doing this for 8 years here now, and hopefully they'll be able to continue them.

Everything went great with Shelby...until she started telling me that she "needed to throw up"...wonderful! I didn't know whether or not I should believe her...but she wasn't kidding. I had a light blanket over her, and decided the best thing to do, was to let her barf into that...at least I could wash the blanket. Shelby wasn't really sick, she gets acid reflux, which was the cause of her needing to vomit, but I felt sorry for her. I felt her forehead, and she said, "I'm sick, I have a fever." I didn't want to try to carry her down out of the crowded bleachers in the dark, during the fireworks display...so I just held her, bunched up the pukey blanket, and waited for the fireworks to be over. Meanwhile, Ray had no idea what was going on and got some great firework pics.

We did get the kids home and settled in...and eventually, they were asleep. We had to get up early on Sunday and get the two little ones, Molly, her friend, Liz and ourselves all to church by 8 AM.

Ray and I were singing, so Molly and Liz watched Shelby and CJ for a couple of hours in the toddler nursery. They did a pretty good job keeping the two of them occupied. Everything went pretty well...until after church...when I lost Shelby for a few minutes. The big girls walked out of the room, and (since I was talking to a friend in the doorway), I didn't immediately notice that Shelby had followed them. Apparently, they hadn't noticed either. She didn't actually go very far, but since she had taken off her shoes at the top of the stairs, I wasn't sure which way she had gone. Was she downstairs...outside? I enlisted some help from some people who happened to be there in the hallway, and after a few minutes she was found. She was just sitting in a chair in the library...reading a book. As I said, she hadn't gone far at all...but the chair she was in was in the corner of the room, and I couldn't see her without actually stepping into the library! She seems to love to play these little tricks on people.

After church, we did our usual "Chinese" for lunch. Shelby didn't like much of anything they had to offer, but she did enjoy dipping her sugar donut in the ketchup...mmmm...good. While we were eating, I asked her how she liked the fireworks the night before. Her response was, "Boom! throw-up!" I guess that about summed it up for her.

Sunday afternoon, after we'd all taken a nap, Shelby was outside with my daughter, Jessica. She saw the wading pool and decided she'd like to go for another dip...a skinny-dip that is! Before Jess could stop her, she was stripped completely naked and sitting at the top of the slide in the front yard! It's a good thing we live out in the middle of nowhere, and no cars happened to be passing by. I grabbed her, brought her in the house and got her dressed. Shortly after that, we took her home.

On the way to her house, I took a picture of her playing her Hanna Montana guitar. This is Shelby's rock star pose:

While she was sitting behind Ray in the van, she pointed to him and asked, "Is he Christian's dad?" to which I replied, "No, Ray is Christian's Grandpa." Shelby burst out laughing and said, "Oops, my bad!" Can you tell she has older brothers and sisters? All in all, it was good weekend, and Shelby can be a lot of fun...I just probably have a few more gray hairs now, than I had before she came to visit.

Happy 233rd Birthday, America!

I'm pretty sure I won't get a chance to blog tomorrow, so I thought I'd say it today. It should be an interesting, busy weekend. We're going to my home town for the big parade in the morning, and then bringing my 6yr old niece, Shelby home with us for the rest of the weekend. Shelby was born with Down Syndrome, and is quite a character. The other day, her mother said she put on a hat, grabbed her guitar and said, "See ya, I'm going to Mexico, my band is there." And then she came back in and asked her if she'd give her a ride.

We had her last year for the Fourth too...that's when Shelby locked herself in the bathroom at ShopKo, and I had to crawl in after her...while she proceeded to crawl into the next one...

This year, I'll also have my 4 yr old grandson, CJ. Molly is having her friend Liz join us for the weekend as well, so hopefully the big girls can help us keep an eye on the two little ones. After the parade, we're going to come back to P-town for the festivities here. They've got kid's games, a pork chop dinner, karaoke, and then fireworks to top off the weekend. And then, I'll have to try to get all the kids up on Sunday morning to get us all to church by 8AM, because Ray and I are helping lead the worship. Hopefully, Molly and Liz can keep Shelby and CJ entertained while we sing. I'll let y'all know how it all works out. Happy Independence Day!!

Parade Highlights!

Yesterday, we headed to the town I grew up in, (which is about an hour West of where I live now), for their big July 4th festivities. For as long as I can remember, almost every year of my life, I have either been in or sat and watched this parade. For the most part, you see the same floats and entries year after year...but here are a couple of my favorites. My parents own a 1963? Ford convertible, so are asked to have either the grand marshal or some other parade royalty ride in it each year. This year, they had the honor of escorting the senior citizen King and Queen. They had one of my little nephews, and one of my little nieces along for the ride. There was another entry we first saw in last year's parade. It's pretty impressive. A local towing company lines up all of their trucks...and the first truck tows the next one, which tows the next one...and so on...and so on. I believe I counted about a dozen trucks here. It looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure how they take corners. Very carefully I guess.

Here are a couple of other pics that my hubby and I took:

Small Town...Big Fireworks Display!

Our town has been putting on a fireworks display for about 7 years now. I have been to displays in larger cities, but they are not necessarily any better than the one we get to see in our little town. We don't generally have them exactly on the fourth, in fact, they were on the third this year because they are held at the local speedway, which holds races every Friday night. I was trying out my new camera last night, and here is a sample of what I caught. I thought it was an especially good show this year, even though I ended up watching most of it through the small screen on my new camera. My only wish would be that one of these years they would update their whole speaker system, so that the patriotic music they play along with the fireworks extravaganza didn't sound so much like the old car window speakers we used to listen to at the outdoor drive-in theater.

I was watching the video I had shot with my camera, and thinking back to when I was a kid, (you know, back in the olden days), when we would see one firework set off at a time by hand. Each one would be followed by a collective oooooooooh, aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, or OOOOOOHHHH...from the crowd...in sequential order. It was like it was all scripted, everyone said the same thing at the same time. After all, you wouldn't want to be caught "aaaaaahhhh"ing when you should have been "oooohhhhh"ing!
Back then, it seemed like the shows lasted for hours, and they probably did - since they were mostly lit one by one. They were nothing like the displays of today, which have sometimes made us wonder if they had accidentally triggered them all at once. Anyway, it was a great show as usual, and hopefully, the community will continue to support it so that generations to come can enjoy them in the future. I am going to try to post a video of the grand finale here: