Thursday, July 4

The 3rd and the 4th of July

Wednesday, July 3rd

My alarm went off and I wondered what kind of a workday I was going to have. I logged on and found out that morning that my supervisor decided to take away the data collections and give them to the nurses.  I sat there and was like, hmm, more stuff taken away and nothing to replace it with and it was very poor timing on her part as well due to the 4th of July holiday.  I worked on my share of the date extensions and then waited until the other work came over.  My afternoons were already boring and now my early mornings were now too.

That day, I was pretty much done with all of my work by lunchtime. I spent some time putting up barriers in the cul-de-sac so no one would park along our stretch of street. 

The other day, Mom wanted us to get together for dinner before the fireworks at Rainier Vista Park.  We came up with a menu and everyone was going to come over to our house.  We decided on burgers, beans, chips, potato salad, brownies and key lime pie.  I had most of the stuff already and only had to go purchase a couple things earlier that week.  We invited Josh, Heather, Mom, Dad, Doug, Sonya, Doug, Erika, Zac and Brian.

When it was finally time to log off for a day (I really hate it when holidays are in the middle of the week because it ruins the week), I got my shoes on, grabbed my keys and headphones and went for my daily walk around the park.  The neighborhood and park were starting to get busy.  I listened to my murder porn and did my loop.  I noticed that the park had painted an American flag on one of the soccer field hills and I thought it was pretty cool.


I got home and started getting the tables and chairs out to the back yard.  Ben came home shortly after and helped me.  He got the grill going and I started getting the rest of the food going.  Everyone came over around 6ish.  We ate, hung out and talked about wedding stuff since it was about a week away.  We still had a bunch of stuff left to do.  Mom had brought over some baby clothes and boxes from our cousin Amanda, who had just moved, and her son outgrew his clothes and thought Erika might like them.

Erika, Zac, Brian and Dad left just before 8 to go home.  They didn't want to watch fireworks at the park.  Doug and Sonya went over early and saved us some spots while everyone else helped us put the food, tables and chairs back into the house.

Mom, Heather, Josh and I grabbed a couple of blankets and walked over to the park through the neighborhood.  We got closer to the park, and I texted Doug to see where they were. He said they were right by the fence and tree line as you entered the park from the neighborhood, and we will see them.  I told him okay.  We got into the park, and we saw them just as he said we would.  We put down blankets and got comfortable.  We had about a half hour to go until 10.

I told Mom that this was probably the last time we were going to do the Rainier Vista fireworks with the eventual move and all.  I was not going to drive out from Rainier and try to find a place to park or try to leave the area afterwards.  We have gone every year since 2017 except for the Covid years (2020 and 2021) when the event didn't take place.



I remember the first time Ben and I went to the fireworks at the park.  Erika was living in Nevada and she and Travis rode up on the motorcycle to visit for a couple days.  We walked from the 59th Loop house to the park.  We didn't realize it was that far of a walk and kinda regretted it. We still had fun until we got home and found out our roommate that was living with us invited her boyfriend over without telling us and he almost got punched in the face.  The reason being that the hallway was dark when we got home, and we saw someone we didn't know coming down the dark hallway.  We were very angry at her for not communicating.

Anyway, fireworks promptly started at 10:00 and went until about 10:20.  I love this time of year.  It is hands down my favorite.  I wish it could be July year around.  Fireworks just make it even better.


We gathered up our stuff and started making the walk back to the house.  Doug and Sonya left as soon as they got back, and Mom loitered around for a bit.  Josh, Heather, Ben and I stopped by Randy's house and Ben and Josh took shots with Randy.  Mom decided to leave and stop at the store for some strawberries.  She called and told me she had to fight with traffic, and it took her a while to get to Safeway.

Josh and Heather left after a while and Mom texted me that she got home just after midnight.  Ben and I did the dishes, cleaned up the rest of the house and then went to bed late.  I am so glad I didn't have to go to work the next day.

Thursday, July 4th

I woke up around 9:30ish, ate a light breakfast and turned on ESPN to watch the Nathan's hotdog eating contest.  I did not see Joey Chestnut competing and wondered why.  I looked it up.  He was banned from participating in the 2024 contest due to a competing sponsorship with Impossible Foods.  Well, that saved me some time that morning. Instead, I did some laundry and put some stuff away.

Ben eventually got up, ate breakfast and then got ready to go for the day.  We had a couple of stops to make before heading over to Eatonville to Paul and Peggy's lake house for the 4th.  I asked Megan if we could stop by and bring root beer over for their root beer floats (she and the kids had made homemade ice cream the day before) and she said to come on by.

Ben and I got organize, got everything packed up into the Escape and stopped by Walmart to grab a few things and the root beer we promised Megan.  We drove into Rainier and stopped by the storage unit so we could pick up our floatie tubes.  We were at the storage unit for a bit because we had to get to the back of the storage unit where the tote was.  I high fived past Val for labeling the totes so we didn't have to open all of them.

We put everything back, loaded up the Escape with the tote that we needed and headed over to Megan's house for a bit.  When we got there, Megan was helping her dad with the tractor and Miles and Mason had a giant plastic tarp with the sprinkler on it dumping soap so they could slide across it.  I found this amusing and we totally did this as kids too.  Miles and Mason took turns sliding across it a couple times before Megan came back.

She came out of the woods on the other side of the driveway and asked if we wanted to come inside.  We brought the root beer with us into the house.  The boys rinsed off and wrapped towels around themselves.  We couldn't stay long so we chatted for a bit, she told us about her upcoming trip to Yellowstone with the boys, she gave us some of the homemade ice cream and some eggs, we thanked her, and we headed over to get Grandma. 

We got to Grandma's, helped her cram the Escape with her stuff and drove over to Mom and Dad's house.  Mom was actually ready to go.  We transferred everything from the Escape to her Expedition. Everyone piled in and we headed off towards Eatonville.  Dad was going to drive himself over later.  We got there around 3:30. We unpacked all of our stuff and drove it to the lake side of the house.  Ben and I spent some time blowing up our inner tubes. 

We said hi to the people who were there that early and then Ben and I got into our suits and spent about an hour floating around in the lake.  It was such a nice day!  I love summertime! It was so nice to just float, enjoy the sun and relax a little bit before the wedding (which was the previous weekend) and we still had a lot of stuff to do. 

It was almost time for us to get out and Amy, Trish and Ed showed up.  Amy got changed and went into the lake for a little bit.  Ben and I wandered around visiting with people we hadn't seen since the last 4th of July. We had invited most of them to the wedding so that is what they wanted to talk about.

They took the boat out a couple times and circled the lake. I didn't go on it this year.

They had started dinner around 5ish, and everyone was helping Peggy get things ready in the kitchen. I helped bring out some of the food to put on the tables on the porch.  There was a lot of food but there were also a lot of people there too!  I enjoyed a hamburger and some of the sides, fruit and chips.  It was delicious on an 80-degree day.  I was in my favorite time of the year.  We visited some more, had a small birthday party for Bev, played with some of the daytime fireworks and waited until it slowly got dark.  All of the lake houses along the shoreline lit their red flare.




We got out some sparklers and messed around with those and then found our chairs, got comfortable and watched the barge float across the lake until it reached the middle.  We wondered what was going on because they did not start promptly at 10, like they've done in the past.  We thought maybe there was a malfunction of some sort.  They did finally get it going around 10:15 and the show was amazing, like it always was.





We gathered up our stuff, packed it in Mom's wagon and took it to the Expedition.  We thanked Paul and Peggy for a wonderful time, and they said they would see us at the wedding the following weekend. We piled in all of our stuff into the back of Mom's vehicle and headed back to Rainier to drop off Grandma and Mom.  We got our stuff into the Escape when we dropped off Mom, we got gas and Ben, and I went home.  I showered really quickly and went to bed around 1.  We had to go to work the next day.  I really hate having holidays in the middle of the week.  It really does wreck the week and gets people off their routines.

Next Adventure:  Our Wedding Day!