3 Cheers for the Red, White, and BLUE

We had a great 4th of July. It started out with red, white, and blue sprinkled DOUGHNUTS! YUM! ( I love that doughnuts are a treat now, when I taught I think I ate them every Friday! UGH!)
We then decided to head out to a couple lakes to check them out. Now I had an image in my head of "lake". I saw big beautiful pine trees shading a blue pristine lake with sandy beach area. What we got was the pristine blue lake with sandy beach area, but it had the landscape of Lake Mead, bummer. Still we had a great time!

Ryan was way excited to rent a boat! I am not such a huge fan of the water, I like my chlorinated pools and maybe a boat the size of the Love Boat, and that's about as far as my comfortablilty level goes. So he got us a paddle boat and we all tried doing it. Of course we would get a broken boat and had to bring it back to the dock; by that time Lauren was as big of fan as I was of "boating" so we let Dad and Julia do it alone. They looked so cute out on the water together. I guess on the other side of the lake they could see some wild dogs, so they spent a lot of time over there. They also paddled right by a duck family. I loved it when they would wave to me. After the lake we went to get some lunch and ended up at a very patriotic place- Yuki Sushi Robata. Yeah we had Japanese food on the 4th of July, go figure. It amazes me how much Julia like Japanese food, she downs California rolls and edamame like a champ!
We went home in anticipation of a BBQ that we were invited to by a couple in our ward and then fireworks. The BBQ was really really good. I don't think we fit in real well with the people. They're all from Utah if that explains anything. We were asked if it was hard for us to give up gambling when we converted. Umm...no? It was just a little weird. So anyway a big thunderstorm rolled in and we headed home only to watch NYC's fireworks on t.v. It was a nice 4th. In the back of my heart is that perfect 4th I want to have some day with a red checked tablecloth, watermelon, Ryan at the BBQ, the kids running around with their friends, drinking lemonade with my friends and just LAUGHING, and then ending with the best biggest fireworks show ever. Something to look forward to. :)