CaNeUt Day 7 - 4th of July

Hey, it's July 19, and I'm finally writing about July 4.  I'm a little earlier than last year, but not much.

After breakfast, I coerced, cajoled, and threatened everyone into their flag shirts for the annual torture: family pictures.

We started in 1999, and we've hit almost every year since.  (We missed 2 years, not in a row.)

 After pictures, all the teens changed into different shirts, and we set off to watch the parade.

 Hannah and Katie didn't know what to make of people throwing beads and candy at them.  I had to encourage them to get out there and pick some loot up.

My camera died during the parade, so the rest of the pictures were taken on my phone, which I kept expecting to tell me it was full.

 After the parade, the park opened for the town celebration.  There was food and games and gold panning.

I mostly hung out in the shade at our "base camp," the park blanket and circle of chairs we set up upon arrival.

Brianna took Hannah around to the games, and Hannah won this husky stuffed animal.  Bri kinda wanted it, until Hannah got a nosebleed on the way home from the park and got blood all over it.  The air is really dry there.

Yes, my pint size first grader is guzzling her own 12 ounce soda.  :sigh:  I'm pretty sure my first few kids didn't get their own whole soda until they were double digits old.

 And my delicate little lotus blossom is chowing Cheetos like that's a feed bag.

I like to think I've "mellowed out," but maybe I've just gotten old and lazy.  The jury is still out.

Buddy took Katie around to the bouncy houses and such.  Katie had a marvelous time.

The mine usually brings one of the big, big dump trucks for people to ogle, but this year, they brought this 390F CAT excavator instead.

And there's Paul, ogling it.

Miss Hannah takes a moment to snuggle her new husky puppy.

All the miles caught up to me, and I got super tired, so we didn't end up staying as long as we usually do.  Paul and I took Jack and the little girls back to the house to watch movies and play quietly while I caught a nap.

On our way, we noticed another wild fire in the distance, so Paul kept an eye out online for information about that, since, depending on where it was, it had the potential to impact our travel plans for the next day.  However, it ended up not being an issue for us.

After a nap and some more food, we headed back out to watch the fireworks.

Here in California, I'm pretty sure fireworks are governed by county ordinance.  Meaning, at home, we have rules about what we're allowed to purchase, and what we're allowed to set off, based on where we live.

In middle o'nowhere, Nevada, however, you can pretty much set off anything you can get your hands on, so Paul was "safely disposing of" a bucket of contraband fireworks that was unearthed in cleaning out one of the fire stations for demolition.  It's obviously hard to get pictures in the dark, but let's just say a good time was had by all, except maybe the part where Joel got grazed by a flying something or other.

This brings us to the very end of our vacation photos.  The next day's drive home was fairly uneventful, aside from the wildfire we drove past.  Upon arriving home, I immediately set to work on the laundry.  The girls still had plenty of clean clothes in their closet, but pretty much everybody would soon run out of clean underwear without urgent action.

A friend says, "East or West, home is best!" and there's a grain of truth to that.  Coming home, getting everything put away, paying the cat sitter, and going back to ordinary life feels good.  But I still love to see new things, too.  And I know that there are so many more things out there that I have yet to see.  I think if we had limitless resources I would travel more.


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