We had a great 4th of July! Our neighborhood has activities all day, beginning with a little parade. People decorate their golf carts, mowers and bicycles and toss candy. It's very cute. After that, Bob, Parker and the neighbors went up to the pool and did lots of playing in the water. For dinner, we went to our friend's house and did more swimming (see video!) and then back to the neighborhood to watch fireworks. Everyone congregates at the pool cabana, and there's a band and dancing, and people bring their own fireworks and set them off over the lake. It's a ton of fun, and Parker lasted until 11pm! We really soaked it up this year and had a great time.
The parade
SWIMMING! At swim lessons, Parker learned to swim underwater all the way across the pool, but it's been pulling teeth to get her to do just a couple strokes under water at home. Yesterday at our friend's house, she finally just went for it, and swam over and over and over again while we cheered. She's very proud of herself.....and we're super thrilled too.
We made our annual trip to California a couple weeks ago. We left early on a Saturday morning, and finally got home Sunday night, 8 days later. We had planned to get home the Saturday before...but because of storms in Dallas, our flight was canceled as we were boarding the plane! Luckily, quick-thinking Bob started dialing the 1-800 number as soon as he heard the word "canceled" and we were able to get on a flight the next day. So we rented a car and drove back to Escondido to Bob's cousin's house and stayed another night there. It was nice to get to spend some time on the beach, and also to see other areas of CA....citrus trees, mountain views, etc.. Avocados are 5/$1 there.
Incidentally, the directions to Bob's cousin's house sound like this: "you take the 5 to the 8 to the 163 to the 15". For some reason, in California, they put "the" in front of their highways....instead of "I" like we do. I thought the Texas folks might find that regional difference interesting.
We stayed in a condo in between the beach and the bay (Mission beach/bay) - it had a nice courtyard where Parker could play with her cousins, and was about a half a block from either the calm water of the bay, or the waves on the beach. Parker preferred the waves, surprisingly, but she tired out pretty quickly. This year, instead of going home for naps, Bob's sister loaned us her 'nap tent', and Parker would crawl in it when she was tired of the sun or wind or of being awake. It worked really well. Bob's sister and her family also came down, and we had a lot of fun visiting with them, and Parker loved playing with Lexie. So all together, Bob saw his Grandmother, 3 aunts (or 1 aunt and her 2 sisters....how does that work?), his uncle, 2 cousins and their husbands and their kids, and his sister, brother in law and niece and nephews. Phew! Lots of folks!
Today, after years of talking about it, we finally began construction on the playroom/family room renovation. And by 'construction', I mean deconstruction. And by 'we', I mean the guys in this picture. As it turns out, carpenters get really jumpy when working around old wiring and someone does flash photography when they're not expecting it. Whoops. They tore out all the old paneling and cabinets today, and soon an electrician will add some new lighting. Then we'll have new texture and paint, and new wainscoting and new built-ins. New windows and a new door too. Yahoo! Ideally, I would not have schedule this so soon after returning from a vacation. Yesterday was ROUGH with Parker afflicted with severe jetlag and me needing to completely empty this room of 4 years of toy accumulation. We got it done though. I'll try and have vacation pictures up soon.
