The First Half of July

Okay, why is everyone so bad at blogging these days?  Haha!  No but really.  The blogosphere seems to be a ghost town these days.  It's making my blogging motivation go down.  (Which I know no one cares about, but I care because I like to have these memories written down).  :-)  Hmm, blaming others for my blogging laziness..... nice.

Anyway, our 4th of July activities actually began on the 3rd of July.  Before we bought our house we lived in a city about 20 minutes away called Ahwatukee and they do fireworks on the 3rd of July.  I thought it might be kind of cool to take the kids to that fireworks show along with another fireworks show in our town the next day.  So, I got the kids dressed up all festive on the 3rd.

That evening, as soon as we packed up the kids in the car and started driving, the craziest dust storm hit the city!  It was way cool!  I could see it coming straight for us when we were on the freeway and got nervous but Michael drove slowly and it was actually kind of neat to drive through it.  Here's a pic of our view from our car:

And a pic taken by someone on an airplane:

Well, after the dust storm cleared it started storming!  Rain (or any fun weather) is pretty rare here, and of course it had to happen on the one day I didn't want it to!  Ha!  There was some seriously crazy wind going on as well as thunder and lightning!  Obviously the fireworks show was canceled but we decided to make the most of being in our old stomping grounds and got some frozen yogurt at the place down the street from our old apartment where we used to go all the time.  (see: Fro Yo Fridays)

The storm ended pretty quickly so after we got home and I put Kate to bed me and Matthew played with sparklers in our backyard.  He was kinda bummed that we hadn't seen any fireworks but this helped make up for it.

On the actual 4th of July the kids both had colds :-( but we tried to make the most out of the day.  We skipped going to the pool so that the kids could rest (since toddlers are totally awesome at "resting") at home, but we did make it to Five Guys for lunch. Yum!

And then we went to a great fireworks show that evening!  It was close to our home, not too crowded, and it was actually (surprisingly) quite pleasant outside.  (I think thanks to the previous day's storm!)  Glow sticks helped keep the kids entertained until the show started.

And then the next week Cory, Karen, (Michael's sister) Natalie, and Leah came to visit for a few days!  We do not see them nearly enough.  We loved having them here and the time passed way too quickly.  Matthew still talks about "Nataleah."

While they were here we went to the Natural History Museum in Mesa which was actually way cool.  I was surprised we hadn't been there before, or even heard anything about it!  I'm sure we'll be back.  

And then Kate turned 18 months and she got to go to nursery!  Heck yes!  Everyone bring your nursery leaders cookies.  They deserve it.  :-)  Here's a pic of me and Kate on her first day of nursery:  (And she did awesome, by the way).

The second half of July was mostly consumed with our trip to Idaho and CA, which I will write about next!