4th of July and family

Friday: Mom, Dad, Babi, Grandma, and Grandpa all came to visit me over 4th of July weekend. Their flight got in in the morning and they came over to the house for lunch. Devin and I made tacos. Since Dad was already falling asleep on the couch after lunch we went to the Sea Scape so they could relax a little before heading to Pizza Gallery for dinner. Instead we went down to the beach and went swimming in the ocean. Then we had a delicious dinner at Pizza Gallery while Devin was hard at work in the kitchen.

Saturday: Saturday we went to the Merritt Island Wildlife Preserve. We stopped at the Wildlife Center and did some of the walking trails. I

saw a wild boar for the first time! We also saw soft shelled turtles, banana spiders, a snake (which I didn't see), a giant grass hopper, and of course lots of lizards. After the walking trails we went on the auto tour and we saw some birds and alligators.

Sunday: Happy Fourth of July!!!! We left the Sea Scape fairly early and headed up to

Cocoa Beach to go kayaking. We got three double kayaks so Mom, Dad, and I could paddle the

grandparents around. Ed and Micky were our very awesome guides. It was overcast so it was relatively cool and there weren't as many animals out as other times I have gone but we sti

ll saw manatees, dolphins, pelicans, horse shoe crab shells, and a red rat snake which I spotted.

After kayaking we headed to Pizza Gallery's 1st annual 4th of July picnic. We missed the beginning of it but there was still a lot of

really yummy food left over. Devin got a game of volleyball set up because I love volleyball and I

haven't played in years. I was also coerced into doing a three

legged race with Devin which was hilarious. I think we had the lead for a little bit but we came in second or third. I had to go to work at the Sea Scape in the afternoon so the family had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, the Jungle, and I saw them when they got back to the motel. Devin came over after he got off of work and we got to spend some time just chatting together. Grandma bought everyone scratch off lottery tickets so we had fun seeing who won. At dusk we watched people doing fireworks on the beach and we set off the ones that Devin brought over. One of the groups on the beach must have spent tons of money in fireworks because they were shooting off huge professional looking fireworks for a long time. Devin and I both worked all day Monday so at the end of the night I said goodbye to everyone. The next day they went up to the Kennedy Space Center before flying home and meeting Greg at the O'Hare Airport.

Holiday decorations

Devin and I put up our holiday tree today. We were going to use his fake tree because it is more more earth friendly and cheaper but I took one look at it and just couldn't do it. So today we picked out a live (at least for a while) tree and got some beads and bows for it. Now we just need to finish getting all of the presents under it. I think it turned out well, although I wish I had had more lights and bead garland for it. We even got Grant in a Santa hat for pictures.

Happy blow stuff up day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Fourth of July. Yay for our country! I started the day off in kind of a bad mood because I took Curry to PetCo for people to look at him and he was adopted. That is of course a good thing and the whole point of fostering, but they took my puppy and I was very, very unhappy about it. It was so hard to leave him behind and there may have been a few tears shed. The thought of adopting him myself had crossed my mind a couple of times. Hopefully he is very happy in his new home. It sounds like he will have pugs to play with which is good since he loves to play with other dogs.

Devin and I went to see the fireworks display in Cocoa because the Brevard Symphony Orchestra was playing and I haven’t heard them before. They were good and the fireworks were awesome. My favorites are the ones that snap, crackle, and pop. After the show we headed to the beach to meet Ryan and Trina with the $150 worth of fireworks that we bought. It was really closer to $300 worth since everything was buy one get one free. There were other people shooting off fireworks as well but ours were by far the biggest and best. We had fountains, spinners, firecrackers, sparklers, bottle rockets, roman candles (one of my favorites), and the big ones that you shoot from mortars. Then we headed back to the house and lit some black snakes in the driveway and then off to bed. More holidays should have fireworks.