Happy 4th

We had a great long weekend, and ended up getting a lot done around the house, with enough time left over for some much needed relaxation.

Saturday started out rainy, but by the time everyone arrived, it was wrapping up. We had a nice BBQ with some happy mark&tina-gria.



(Don't mess with Beth when she's packing corn!)



Turns out, this neighborhood gets pretty nuts on the 4th. There were so many fireworks, almost as much as we saw when we headed out to Palatine the night before to hang out with Michael's mom, brad, and my mom. It was like our own personal backyard show.

Feeling quite full, and wanting to walk around in the weird smokey fog which descended upon us, we decided a walk from our past was long due, and walked the 2 blocks over to the 2 flat where all of our family grew up. We sat out side and sang amazing grace... I'm sure if anyone saw us they would think we were nuts, but it was an ode to the legend that was Aunt Gracie.

We were going to walk around some more, but people were lighting fireworks on that block, and since some were blowing up in the street, we quickly got the hell out there.

We wrapped up the night with some s'mores (Hollie, you're the BEST). Yummmm. It's been forever since we had those.


Sunday morning, we went out to the backyard to lay in the hammock. About 6 hours later, we finally got up since our neighbor next door was barbecuing and made us up a plate (they rock!). So we had to move to go sit at the table, then back to the hard work that is chilling in the hammock. It was just what we needed.