A Small Town Fourth of July

As I mentioned last week, I was going to head down to Southern Arizona for the weekend of the Fourth of July.

A friend of mine lives down there with her husband and four children and it is at least ten degrees cooler than home. Plus, she had a nice gentleman that she wanted me to meet. So, I packed up my bags (you could say I over packed) and headed south on Friday after work.

A quick stop at eegee's for a strawberry/pina colada eegee and then it was down to Patagonia.

Contrary to O'Dub's belief, there is no time travel required to get there. Just about three hours and one Border Patrol checkpoint.

When I got to the house, all four children attacked me! Maybe not attack, but they followed me into my room and asked me a million questions.

I had to laugh when the younger daughter asked me, Do you have a boyfriend? When I told her that I did not, she replied, You should get one.

If only it were that easy. 

Or men were more reasonable.

We left the kids at home with her hubby and headed to the local watering hole for a few drinks and to meet the nice gentleman. It was a typical small town bar and NG was cute and funny.

On Saturday we took the kids swimming and then hung out until we had to go watch the hubby rope.

NG was supposed to meet us at the fairgrounds, but there were some timing, communication, and kid issues, so we ended up only seeing him on our way back to the house around 10 pm.

Sunday was a big day - we had to go to the parade, street fair, host a bbq, and then watch fireworks.

For some reason that I will never understand, they scheduled the parade to start at 11 am. I mentioned that it is typically at least 10 degrees cooler down south, but it was every bit of 90 degrees when the parade started and that is hot to just be sitting in the sun.

NG had to drive his work truck in the parade and the kiddos wanted to get candy, so he waved as he drove by and then came and found us when his parade route was over. 

Sidenote: O'Dub has never been to a parade where they threw candy. WHAT? I'm sad for him.

We all headed down to the street fair for some lunch and sno-cones. After about 10 minutes, NG (I'm pretty sure realizing that he was going to need some alcohol to deal with the madness) decided to run home to change out of his uniform. We took the kids to the jumping castle, got our snacks, and headed out of there before I started disciplining other people's children.

We missed NG's return and the kids needed naps so we went home to begin preparing for our BBQ later in the evening. When hubby got home, we ran to town for a few last minute supplies and a cold beer.

The BBQ was a HIT and we made some delicious food that I will post about on Airplane Food sometime next week. Although I will warn you right now that it wasn't even a little bit healthy.

NG came to the party and we enjoyed a nice conversation before we rode to the fireworks together. The fireworks show was AMAZING! I absolutely LOVE fireworks - they are in my top 10 favorite things of all time! And I was super impressed by this small town production.

After fireworks were over, we headed back to the house and NG and I chatted while the kids ran around the yard with sparklers.

It was really a great Independence Day weekend!

(And I got another eegee on the way home!!)