4th of July Festivities aka I need a nap

We had a fantastic 4th of July weekend!  We had friends in town from Colorado and it was an absolute blast getting to show them around town and have them stay as our first guests in our new house.  It's worth noting they are 2 of a small group of people I'd feel comfortable staying in our half-finished house.  I didn't feel the normal pressure to have everything perfect because I knew they would understand how busy we've been and just be excited to see our new digs.

Tim and Erica showed up Friday evening at 6 p.m. on the dot and were met with cocktails and the promise of a ridiculously large dinner.  We cooked up chicken, brats, and burgers...basically we had a lot of meat in the fridge that needed to be cooked and I'm slightly embarrassed to say there wasn't much leftover! We had plans to go to my aunt's house for fireworks that night but unfortunately the show had to be cancelled due to weather so we opted for shuffle board at my parents instead.

Saturday was all about the river.  We made a big brunch to fuel up and then headed out around 1:30 and hopped on a boat out to the sandbar to join about 30 other people.  We had enough food, drinks, and bag chairs to last us the whole weekend but the weather wasn't super cooperative.  We were all relieved we weren't roasting all day but it was a little too cloudy/chilly to get in the water so stuck to the sand and hung out for most of the afternoon/evening.  That night we went to a family friends for fireworks, a ton of food, and a super competitive head to head basketball shooting game.  Basically I won and my brother in law is a big cheater.  I made some super yummy S'mores chocolate chip cookies that I first heard about here.  I LOVED them and lots of people were raving about them at the party so I'd say they come highly recommended.  When we got back to town, we decided to put Duke to bed at my parent's house and show Tim and Erica a few bars downtown.  Summer is pretty quiet around here since all of the student's are gone so we did a quick 3 bar hop to keep things interesting and had an absolute blast enjoying each others company and having some adult-only fun. 

On Sunday the weather was supposed to be similar to Saturday so we had my family over for breakfast pizza in the morning, and showed off our new house to my sister, brother in law, and nephew.  That afternoon the sun decided to make it's debut and since we weren't able to get out to the river, we decided to play a little golf, and then took off for my cousin's cabin for another round of fireworks.  Duke was a trooper but we spent most of the evening in the cabin watching Zootopia with the other littles...I had high hopes he would fall asleep but he was pretty wired so we took off around 10 to get him in bed.  Thank goodness he will sleep in because this boy needs his 11-12 hours of sleep (with 1 or 2 feedings in between) to maintain his happy happy demeanor.

Impatiently waiting for fireworks to start...

Monday was really low key.  We had brunch at my parents to send off my sis, brother in law and nephew back to Colorado and then Dennis and I treated Tim and Erica to a farm tour and showed them how to get cows to eat out of your hand :)  We watched a 3rd round of fireworks that night and I checked in early to prepare for work Tuesday.  Luckily I was able to meet up with them for lunch before they took off yesterday and from the sounds of it, they may just come visit again now that they've seen a little of what SD has to offer!

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th with friends and family! I'll be back tomorrow with Part 2 of our Vermont recap...I was having some major computer issues last night and couldn't get the pictures uploaded!  Fingers crossed technology is on my side tonight.

Happy Hump Day!

-T-