happy 4th of july!

We had a great time celebrating the 4th of July this year. We had originally planned to go down to downtown boston, they have a big thing that they do every year. But with rain originally predicted for the 4th, we made back up plans, just in case. It ended up being a beautiful day, but we went with the back up plan instead. It was a little more low key, and I don't know if all of us were up spending the day in the city. Next year I hope to make it down though!

Side note, I saw this little turtle on the side of the road on the 3rd. Isn't he cute?


I have never seen a turtle just walking along the road before! He hid in his shell when I came by, but after I left he was just mosey-ing along and thankfully went into the grass. Bye Mr. Slowsky!

Our friends Nick and Beck are house-sitting for a family in Byfield, which is about 30 minutes away from the seminary. We had decided to take advantage of the gas grill and big house for our festivities. Daniel and I headed over in the afternoon and Nick began cooking up some hot dogs. We enjoyed a tasty dinner, and even experimented with making some corn on the cob on the grill. It wasn't bad, but I don't know if any of us were crazy about it. :)

Daniel looking especially festive in his shirt. :)

Posing for a picture!

Getting the table all set.

Hi Miles the dog!

Mmm, corn. :)

Gotta love the grill marks. :)

After we finished eating, we went inside for a little while to play some dominoes and eat apple pie.

Daniel trying out a new hairstyle during dominoes. :)

Around 8:30 (well, really once we finished out last round of dominoes) we loaded up into Nick's car and headed out to Salisbury, MA (very northeastern MA, minutes from NH) for their 4th of July festivities. (I think fireworks are illegal in MA, I have yet to see a stand ANYWHERE since moving here. But instead basically every town puts on a fireworks show of some sort. Some on the 3rd and some on the 4th, just to spread out the fun)

We made it to Salisbury in good time but boy did we have a hard time finding parking! The first lot we passed when we came in was closed. The next lot we passed did not have a sign saying it was full, but it was. So we were stuck in the lot for about 15 minutes with a whole line of cars trying to get out back onto the road. Then we decided to try tuning down a different street, which started looking a little sketchy. We turned around but when saw a lot so we decided to check it out. Well, we followed one car and another car followed us, but the lot dead-ended! So we all had to reverse out. The car reversing behind us was quite nervous about going in reverse and was not going very fast. And the guy we followed in had a bad case of road rage of SOMETHING. He must have been in some kind of hurry because he was trying to reverse around us, but there was nowhere to go! Anyway, we thankfully all made it out safely. We finally found a lot with spots still, and it ended up being a great spot, because it was on the side of the road heading out of town, so we were able to leave slightly faster than others. :)

We parked and walked down to the beach where the fire works would be taking place. We walked through a cute little board walk type area, which food stands, arcades, etc. We found a spot on the beach, parked down our chairs and chatted until the fireworks started.

We fortunately sat far back from the water, becse during the fireworks show (and before it started actually) a few people were suprised some waves coming in and getting them wet. Not fun.

Anyway, the fireworks were nice (Beck and I were ooh-ing and aww-ing the whole time).

Ooohh

Aawww

We stopped at the arcade on our way out for a little skeeball fun! Daniel and I thought we did okay, but after spending $2 on games, we only earned enough tickets [combined] for one tootsie roll pop. :) Oh well.

Woo hoo, Joe's playland! I am sure it is cute during the day, but at night it is a little sketchy. :)

Daniel in action

We love skeeball!

We made it out of the parking lot in decent time and arrived back safely at Nick and Beck's house sitting house. From there Daniel and I headed home.

We had church on Sunday, and then a BBQ with our small group after church! It was a BBQ wwekend! :) We had a great time, though we had to leave a little early to pick up our friends Reed and Emily from the airport. We all headed back to the BBQ though in time for some games and dessert. :)

So now Daniel is studying away with his Hebrew (it is his last week of Hebrew I!) and I am going to read the afternoon away. :) We are so thankful for the beautiful weather these past 2 days!! Well, it has been sunny at least (we have had a lot of rain here lately, even some flooding!) but we still havent really hit above 80 yet. Boo - we want summer to get started!!

And, once Daniel finishes his Hebrew final on Friday we are taking off for a little cape cod vacation to celebrate our 3rd anniversary! Yay! We went to cape cod for our anniversary last summer and couldn't get enough, so we had to go back again. We have got to take advantage of cape cod while we are here, right? So anyway, we can't wait. Plus we are staying in a different area this year, so we are excited to explore more of the "lower cape", instead of spending all out time in "mid cape". We are so cool, we even know all the lingo. It is just a quick weekend trip this year, but we have Maui to look forward to in August, so we aren't feeling too jipped. :)

Hope everyone had a great 4th!