Happy 5th of July

I hope you all had a safe and happy fourth!

We drove to Grammaland to see BJ's mom and BJ's cousin Kevin who was in town with his family. BJ's dad and his wife came, too, so it was quite a crowd and lots of fun. Mary Grace and Claire had a big time playing with their cousin Mckinney - she's 8. We barely saw the kids - they were down in Grandma's basement playing almost the whole time. Occasionally they'd come up to snag a cupcake, and once MG got hurt and came up for sympathy, but otherwise, they did their own thing. I was really proud of them for behaving so well, and it was nice to get a chance to visit with the grown ups.

The weather was crummy and the fireworks were postponed, which was a bummer. I took BJ's cousin and his wife, Pam, and their son on a brief tour of Grammaland, instead. Those of you who have been to Grammaland know that the only kind of tour one can do there is brief. We drove past the high school and the university, through downtown, past the house where I grew up... By the time we got back to Grandma Diana's house, the girls were asleep, so BJ and I headed back for home.

On the way down the interstate, we could see fireworks everywhere. At one point I counted ten different large displays that were visible from where we were, and at another point two "finales" were going on in front of us, one at 10 and one at 12 if we were headed toward 12 on a big earth-sized clock, so we could see them both easily. It was a shame the kids were sleeping because it was really neat. The interstate may be the place to go to see fireworks. We didn't get caught in traffic, either, which was a nice change from both our usual experience with interstates, lately, and our usual experience with fireworks - where you always get caught in the leaving crowd when they're over.

For my legions of readers in Grammaland - the fireworks were postponed until tonight. They'll have them at 7 pm this evening at T.J. So, if you missed them, there's still time.

I've done something stupid to my back, again. It started hurting yesterday, and it's pretty bad today. I probably need to go back to the "back quack" (as BJ calls the chiropractor). It's very uncool timing - I need to go shopping for BlogHer, but I can't walk around the mall like this. I can barely walk around the house like this. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Also, the kids are coming down sick. They both have runny noses, coughs, and low-grade fevers this morning.

So, that's what's happening here. We are just going to take it easy today, what with the back and the colds and the putting 1200 miles on the car in a week. We're all looking forward to the chance to rest.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, which is where I plan to get images from now on because apparently I've been doing it wrong. Oops!