Happy 4th!

Happy Independence Day and happy I Finally Got My Darn Camera Back Day. After a month without my life-line and two trips to the Best Buy repair facilities my camera has come home to roost (or shoot in this case). Let's start this month off with a bang, fireworks should do nicely. Yesterday was The Fourth Of July and we had quite the busy day! In the morning we got Matt up at 8:45 and hoofed it around the block to a parade close by us. Major letdown. The parade consisted of a firetruck, which Alexis loved, followed by 3 convertibles carrying the city planner, a councilwoman and someone else... maybe head of the neighborhood watch? Who knows, she didn't have an 8 year old carrying a piece of posterboard with her description on it. After the convertibles there was an antique firetruck which was pretty neat and then a parade of the neighborhood kids on their bikes and scooters decorated in red white and blue. It was a nice little neighborhood parade but we were hoping for something a little bigger, I'm sure we would have appreciated it more if we actually knew any of the people in the convertibles or kids on the bikes. Next year we will be attending the parade in Huntington, THEY have jet planes with red white and blue smoke and street performers.

After an anticlimatic parade we went home and made PB&J sandwiches, jumped on our bikes and rode down to Huntington Beach. As we were having a nice ride along the beach, a demonic kite caught me in it's sights. It plummeted to the ground at just the right angle to affectively close-line me and remove me from my bike seat. I tried keeping the bike up right at the same time as detangling the kite string from my neck before it severed a major artery, keeping the bike up lost the battle. Alexis, bike and picnic lunch went crashing to the floor. Luckily all 25 of the people that had stopped to watch the Crazy Lady on the Bike vs. the Kite came rushing over to pick up baby and bike. I think Alexis might have been upset about it if all of a sudden she didn't have 25 concerned people fawning over her. Instead of crying about the scrape on her arm she just turned on the mayoral charm and, I kid you not, started shaking hands and saying hi! My two year old shakes hands in greetings. After checking her over for injuries and assuring the alarmingly growing crowd that we would survive to see another kite we were back on our way.

We stopped and got some deeeelicious freshly squeezed lemonade from the middle-aged lemonade stand manager and set up our blanket on the grass overlooking the ocean. I don't think we were sitting down for more than 30 seconds when Alexis had a glimpse of the little boy next to us' toys and she was off like a cannon. She barrelled over there, all grace and charm and started pulling his toys out of the toy bag. Like any other child reacting to our painstakingly shy and introverted daughter he ran straight away and to his mom. Luckily they were a very nice family and had no problem with Alexis commandeering their picnic. She ate all their goldfish and played with all their toys and being the selfish parents we are, we let her... Hey, she was wearing herself out, don't expect me to stop anything that will eventually lead to a two hour nap. After lunch we rode around the neighborhoods surrounding downtown and got an apartment hunt underway, we didn't make as much progress as we hoped but there is always next time, we still have a month before our lease is up here at Spring Break Coronado.

When we got home Alexis spent a nice afternoon making mud pies out of Matt's beautifully landscaped lawn and after hosing her off we headed across the street to see the fireworks. For some reason, unknown to me, Alexis associates fireworks with Mickey Mouse. All the people around us were treated to an energentic rendition of "Mickey Moouuuse Cluuub Tooouse" everytime she was swept away by the spirit of the lights. You have not lived until you have heard our daughter sing Mickey Mouse Club House. She definitely will be carrying on all the singing talent that we have to give her, which boils down to approximately, none. She is currently sleeping on the couch because despite all her activity yesterday she was still up at 6:30 this morning, yayyy. Well I hope everyone else had a great Fourth too, I have to go put neosporin on my war wounds from the Battle of the Kite. bye!