Insta-Friday

This last week was spent running around trying to squeeze in every last bit of California sunshine.  Lot's of beach time, lot's of hanging with old friends, and even a little shopping.  We sure are going to miss this.

My grandma took Savannah with her to go shop for Ryder's birthday... why was I not shocked when they came back with a gift for Ryder AND this Doc McStuffins stuff for Savannah.  Uh, it's not her almost birthday.

This kid can't get enough of his "friends".  He has to have about ten to cuddle with at bed time.

"Mom take my picture with this pirate.  I'm going to pretend like I'm dead and hanging from his hook" 

-Savannah

Saluting Old Glory on the 4th.

Monkey girl can climb a tree like a pro now.  My grandpa has spent countless number of hours out there spotting her while she practiced her climbing.

I don't know what it is, but after we are done at the beach Savannah and I both crave tacos.  I swear, if we lived here we'd be sandy all the time, super tan, and probably insanely fat thanks to the mexican food.

Festive & Fun Fourth Of July

We spent the day in Old Town San Diego celebrating our nation's birthday.  It was definitely something different... since Old Town is a historical state park they kept it old school and had a colonial period 4th of July celebration.  There was a cool (very small) parade that started with a cannon going off... they also had a band playing patriotic tunes from the time, along with some pretty cool period themed kid crafts.  One station let the kids make rag dolls out of scrap fabric and another had blocks of fabric cut out that the kids could color and then the quilting association sews them all together into a quilt.  Pretty dang neat.  There were also games and pie eating contests and cake walks.  It was very wholesome and cute.  Plus, it was all free.  I was impressed and the kids had a good time... that pretty much equals a fantastic 4th of July in my book!

The flag ceremony before it all began... clearly not dressed in colonial attire, but still very cool.

The very small parade.

Crafting... she made a creepy voo doo looking rag doll.

Epic 4th of July Fail

Last night's firework show was supposed to be out of this world amazing.  I was so excited about getting to see all these barges launch fireworks set to patriotic music over the ocean/bay.  So cool, right!  I knew that Savannah would love it, probably wouldn't get to see anything like it again... so I figured it would be worth it to brave the crazy crowds with two kids (ALONE) and camp out for three hours prior to the show just to ensure that we had an excellent viewing location.  Everything was going well... we got food, found a crazy awesome spot, made friends with our neighbors on either side of us, the kids were being very good... it was turning out to be a very enjoyable 4th of July.  Then right before the show was set to begin, there was this huge burst of fireworks (seriously looked and sounded more like a bomb to me) that lasted a matter of seconds.  We all thought that it was like an intro to the show, sort of a way to get the crowd's attention.  Then I noticed that the patriotic music was playing on our radio (yes, I was the super cool person who brought a jam box so as not to miss the choreographed music) and that there were no fireworks to go along with it.  Finally at 9:20p.m. the DJ came on the radio and announced that there had been an operator error with the fireworks and that the show had been cancelled.  By that point most of the people around me had kind of suspected that was going to happen.  What a let down.  Explaining to Savannah that the show was not actually going to happen, especially after building it up for the last 4 hours plus... not easy.  She was pretty bummed out the whole walk back to the car.  We will just have to find another way to cross "watch fireworks" off our summer bucket list.  

Today's paper here in SD.  I went ahead and saved the article so I can put it in Ryder's baby book when we get back to Texas.  Happy first 4th of July baby boy!

We seriously had a prime spot for the show.  Right up along the harbor wall and directly between two of the four barges that were going to launch the fireworks.  Would, coulda, shoulda been awesome.

There are videos all over the web of last night's malfunction.  I tried to find one that was taken from our location, but couldn't.  So this one will have to do.  It's made national news, so you may have already seen something similar to the one below.  Incase you haven't... here is what we saw.  Enjoy!