It's not raining, but it's pouring...

They say that summer doesn't arrive around here until July 5th. Sadly, it's true. But this year it came a few days early. The gray has stayed away all week! Hooray! I love the sun. We've had the perfect weather for having lots of fun.


On Independence Day, we started our celebration with the annual ward breakfast at the park. From there we headed down to Fort Lewis to meet up with FAMILY. Wow! One of the hardest things about living here is being so far away from all extended family. But we do have Brad's (Doug's brother) family who lives about four hours south, and now we know his cousin's (Dave)family lives just an hour-and-a-half to the south of us. So we spent our first holiday in Washington (in 3.5 years of living here) with "local" family. It was fun. We had a picnic lunch and let the kids run around and play while the adults sat in the shade and chatted. (That's how you know it really warmed up here--we were sitting in the shade!)


That afternoon, we left there and picked up (Doug's brother and his wife) Clark & Liesel from the airport. As Clark said, for now they are our "honored guests", but starting Monday morning, they'll be put to some serious work! They'll be taking care of the girls while Doug and I are on Trek with the youth.


We tried our best to get them off of their east coast time schedule by keeping them up as late as possible that night. We took some munchies and headed to the mall parking lot to watch the local fireworks display, at the high school field across the street. We thought we had a great view, until we started getting pelted by falling fireworks debris. *hence the title of this post* After the show, the ground around us was littered with chunks of cardboard and ash. I had to come home and shower before bed, to get the stuff out of my hair. I think they were trying to help us appreciate our freedom by experiencing a tiny glimpse of life in a battle zone. So, thank you, America. I'm grateful!