4th of July: Part One

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I was determined to have a fabulous 4th of July weekend jam packed with fun in the sun. But here is what happened instead:

Friday, July 3rd: I had the day off and was excited to have a day to relax and hopefully play at the pool. Around noon we decided to go hit up the pool. So all decked out in our swim attire we stroll over to the pool. It's a bit windy out, very cloudy, and not warm at all! What's the deal?! We made it to the pool and sat on our lawn chairs for a few minutes looking around deciding wheather or not to stay. We were the only ones there and it wasn't warm at all. It was pretty funny actually. After about 5 minutes of sitting by the pool we heard thunder and we were out of there. I was majorly bummed. No pool day for me. Friday night we planned to go see fireworks. Going to see fireworks is one of the reasons why I love the 4th. I love laying on a blanket under the big sky, hearing the loud booms as the fireworks burst in the sky. LOVE IT! However, this year I didn't get to see my fireworks. A huge storm came in instead. It poored and poored! Within 5 minutes of the start of the rain storm the streets were starting to flood and the grass was all flooded. Insane! Then the lightning and thunder started. We had some lightning that hit in our complex causing the power to go out and blew out the door entry key thingys so you couldn't get in our building. So the fire department showed up. Let's just say it made the night pretty interesting. So instead of fireworks we stayed home and played games with Matt and Traci. We had fun playing games, but I was still bummed out about not getting to see the fireworks.

Saturday, July 4th: The above picture is what it looked like all day...gloomy! I woke up and Chad went on a cereal run for me.(I'm addicted to Lucky Charms lately) He came back and about a minute later was gone after rushing in and telling me he was going to Seward with his friends. Seward is this tiny little town about 30 minutes West of Lincoln (literally in the middle of nowhere!) that has the biggest 4th of July celebrations in all of Nebraska. Parades, fireworks, carnivals, craft booths, bands, food, you name it they had it. I figured while he was gone I would go for a nice run outside and hopefully go to the pool. I headed out on my run and about a mile into it the rain starts. Seriously by this time I was fed up with the crappy weather on the holiday weekend. I had to run back to our complex gym to finish up my workout. Chad came home later and we went back to Seward so I could join in on the festivities there. This town has only 6,500 people that live there and they have thousands of people that drive out to their little town just for their celebration. They had a fabulous parade that was by far the funniest small town parade I've ever seen! The parade was complete with tractors, horses, and old Crysler Labaron convertables to parade around their beauty pagent winners. Plus they even threw out great candy like Starburst, Skittles, bubble gum, Sweet Tarts, and great suckers. Oh and my favorite part was that they had snow cones there! You can't find them anywhere here! I asked a couple people at work where to find snow cones and they didn't even know what they were. So deprived! Having the snow cone seemed to make up for the rest of my 4th of July let downs. Here are a few pictures from Chad's morning in Seward.

The firemen having a water contest

Cute Chad by one of his favorite things

Chadly participating in a bubble gum blowing contest