4th of July

I've got to say that I really enjoy the 4th of July falling on a Monday. So instead of one day, we got a full weekend. This picture was taken while we were waiting for the parade to start on Monday afternoon.

When I was growing up, we always spent the 4th at my grandparents' house in Jackson Hole, WY. There were 15 of us cousins, and usually we would all be there. There were tons of people to spend time with and lots of different things to do. The time as a family for the 4th of July was definitely a highlight of my childhood. I always hoped that my children would be able to have similar experiences when they were growing up.

I only had one other sibling (not my mom's fault. She wanted 12 kids!), and she passed away before having children. Her husband remarried and they have a baby just older than Pirate Baby, but they live halfway across the country. My in-laws? Well... let's just say there's not much contact there.

It made me really sad to think that my children were never going to have the benefit of having lots of cousins to run around with as they were growing up.

And then we moved to North Dakota.

I never expected to have a whole family come out of our move. Surfer Pirate just had a friend. A friend who liked and respected him enough to ask him to move out here to help with his family's farm. I never expected that his family would accept us and consider us an extension of their own family. But they did.

Saturday night, we all gathered together at the farm - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows (S'mores... mmmmmmm.....), went for a "hayride" (no hay) behind the tractor, there were 4-wheelers, and tons of fireworks.

It was everything I could have hoped for for my kids.

And they do this every summer.



And people wonder what would possess me to WANT to move to Northern Middle of Nowhere, ND.