Fourth of July

Oh hey there blog. It's been a while. I thought it would be so easy to keep up with posting on you everyday or at least every week when I first started, but then I quickly learned that it's much easier to fill my time doing other things. And, well, I'm not that great at scheduling extra things into my allotted 24 hours each day. But from now on I will try my darnedest to post something, anything a little more frequently for anyone out there wanting to read about our crazy awesome and exciting life, but mainly for me so that I can remember all the wonderful things that happen in that life.

Today I'm reaching WAY back into my arsenal and pulling out our trip to Wilmington for the 4th of July. My aunt, uncle, and cousin Noah live at the beach, and since we had a few days off of work and school we decided, "Hey, what the heck, we should drive the 7 hours to the beach and hang out with them." Little known fact about yours truly: I have a HUGE lead foot. Like really really bad. Whenever I drive anywhere by myself, Brad kindly reminds me before I leave to not drive too fast. I think part of the problem is that our little car doesn't have cruise control, so it's really easy for that lead foot of mine to start getting heavier and heavier and before I know it I'm going 90 in an 55. Which is exactly what happened in the last half hour of our drive to my aunt's house. (Well, let's be honest, that had been happening pretty much the whole 6 hours before that, but I hadn't gotten caught - big difference.) Well, before I could even think twice about slowing down I saw blue lights flashing behind me. Luckily, the police officer was the nicest person I've ever meet. I feigned being lost at 12:30 at night, and he took pity on me. All I got was a warning.

It was Killer's first time ever at the beach, and she didn't know what to do with herself she was so excited. She LOVED the sand. She'd never had so much sand to dig in. Heaven.

She also had a great time chasing her ball and laying on her grass mat. She liked the water, but the waves kind of scared her a little bit. They were 2 or 3 foot waves, so to little Killer I'm sure they looked like tsunamis.

Killer also had a great time playing with her cousin Mimzy and all her toys.

We went to a Wilmington Hammerheads (professional soccer team) game with Ron and Noah and watched their fireworks afterwards. A funny thing happened actually, we were sitting in the front row of the bleachers waiting for the fireworks to start and all of a sudden these huge sprinklers that shot out a TON of water turned on and started spraying us. The first time they sprayed us, and we got soaked we thought that the landscapers (who were down on the field) would quickly turn the sprinklers off, so we stayed in our seats. Well, we were wrong. We got sprayed a good three more times before we finally moved. They eventually turned the sprinklers off, but by that time we were dripping. Quite the night, but so fun!

Saturday morning their ward had a pancake breakfast in celebration of the 4th. Then we went to the beach again. Brad and Noah had a blast covering each other with sand.

 Brad turned Noah into SpongeBob, and Noah and Susan turned Brad into a beautiful mermaid.

  Killer graciously volunteered herself as a pillow.

Sunday night we shot off fireworks and enjoyed the last few hours we had with family. When Monday rolled around we sadly packed our bags and vowed to make going to Wilmington for the 4th a new tradition.

Love, Brad & Courtney