Yet another

post about the 4th of July. Those of you who didn't go to Caliente for the 4th will probably be sick of hearing all of our stories about it by the time we're done, but here's another account of the travels.

For Frik and I, we started out the trip by realizing that our brake lights do not come on at all and so deciding that it wold be a bad idea to take our car on a road trip. We called up his mom who very generously allowed us to take her van in exchange for some favors around the house. We packed 8 people (Me, Frik, Squirt, Sukie, Wudan, the boy, Guildylocks& David) in and hit the road for Caliente.

I realized very early on in our trip that I had left my SD card at home, which was a bummer since we just bought a new digital camera. Because of this, I had to rely on Sukie and Guildylocks' cameras for any pictures that I wanted, which was lame. By the 5th of July, we headed to the "true value" to see if they sold SD cards, which they did... for $80 for a 2 gig. Yeah, I don't think so.

I got to hold Jack Jack a lot on this trip. He is such a cutie! The first night that I was there, he was already asleep, but Chaelomen transferred him to my arms and I held him while they headed to the Brandin Iron for dinner. When he woke up, he was a little distressed, so I went down the road to find them. Turns out the restaurant was closed so I started walking to the motel. A train started coming right as we crossed the tracks, and since it was dark, the lights caught his attention. It whistled a few times just outside of town, which didn't seem to bug him, but then whistled again right at the intersection and he started screaming right into my shoulder. Poor little guy. I know I wasn't quite the comfort to him that he was really looking for, so I hurried to the hotel and passed him off to his momma.

Breakfast on the 4th was fun. Mom had fun showing off her 2 grandbabies and the 2 grandbabies actually got to interact with each other a bit, which was cute. I think they are starting to look more alike, too, which is fun. Dub sprayed the sleeping Squirt with a fire hose and got in big trouble. Even the lady with the strangely inverted belly fat was pissed.

I was worried about the fireworks show with Alice. She was getting sleepy about a half hour before it was scheduled to start, so Sukie helped her fall asleep. She didn't wake up for the first half of the show, and I was debating whether or not to wake her up. Finally, Sukie made the decision for me and woke the baby up and she liked it. Just stared off at the fireworks and looked back at me a couple of times and didn't seem bothered by the noise at all.

We realized on the 5th that we should have brought some board games, so we went to "downtown" and bought monopoly and some cards and dice. I also had my first encounter with "rockband" which was everything that I imagined it to be. I'm glad that people have fun playing this game, and I don't mind watching, but I'm not really one of them. :)

The drive back was mostly uneventful. Stopped in Cedar for some N'Orleans food which was tasty and had to pull over and walk around the side of the road to keep the boy from throwing up. We also had to yell at Frik that he was not allowed to play the dice game while he was driving. I think my favorite moment from the car trip was blasting Michael Jackson and trying to sing along even though none of us knew the words.

Poor Squirt is now sick, snotty and congested. I feel bad for her. She is much needier than normal and can't really sleep without me holding her, which is a lot of work for me, too. Hopefully we didn't expose too many people and no one else gets sick!