Independence Day Catchup

I've been meaning to write about our July 4th activities, but as usual time has escaped me.  Now that it's been a couple of weeks since the celebration of our nation's independence, I'm finally catching up.  This year July 4, fell on a Wednesday, a rather awkward day for holiday, as most people want to be able to go somewhere or do something like extend their weekend.  Being on a Wednesday, most people ended up taking much of the week off, or none at all, like myself.  To make matters worse, because Independence Day was on a Wednesday, many of the traditional locales that offered fireworks, either didn't have them scheduled or moved them to the weekend before or after.

Our old standby, Great America (the theme park near our home), chose not to have fireworks on Wednesday and instead offered them the Saturday before and the Saturday afterwards.  Even without fireworks, we chose to spend the day at the theme park, since it had been a while since Lauren had gone, and it was going to be a hot day, so we let Lauren go to the water park inside Great America.  Apparently every one else in the Bay Area had the same idea, as it was jam packed and almost standing room only in the pool, but Lauren still enjoyed the time there.

In order to get our fix of fireworks, we returned to Great America that Saturday evening, so Lauren could actually ride a few rides (something we didn't do on Wednesday), and followed up by the late evening fireworks, which didn't disappoint.

Normally by this time in July we would have arrived in Arizona for our summer vacation in our house south of Tucson, but this year, we were rather busy between the wedding in Montana, and other activities that we postponed going for a few weeks.

In addition I knew we would be traveling this year with a larger entourage (two cats and a dog this time around).  But the car trip down to Tucson turned out to be relatively smooth.  We even got to stop over in Bakersfield to visit Pauline, the surrogate who carried Lauren for us.  She hadn't seen Lauren in seven years (essentially not since the day she was born).  It turned out we arrived in Bakersfield on Pauline's birthday, which was a nice birthday present for her.

It's been typical summer weather in Arizona.  It's monsoon season, so we've been getting late afternoon thunderstorms, which helps cool down the area.  It'll be a short stay here for us this year, as we'll be headed out to Las Vegas soon, as we've decided that will be our stop over on the way home, since I have to work at a show that intersects nicely time-wise with our travel plans.  I've already arranged boarding for the cats and dog, so we won't have to figure out how to take care of them from our hotel room.