Fourth of July Festivities

Yesterday was a great Fourth of July! Minus the fact that we didn't end up going to Water World. When we checked the hourly forecast (since you can't tell by looking outside what the day will bring around here) this is what the forecast looked like:

We didn't want the chance of rides being closed due to thunderstorms so we decided to hit up the Cherry Creek Arts Festival instead. I guess I didn't realize how huge this festival was - and how crowded! The festival features 200 artists - chosen from 2500 nationwide applicants! It was really busy - but I liked watching all the people from the street while Will fought his way to look at the art in the crowded canopies.

We ate this awesome pizza. It was like french bread pizza.

They had what they called "Culinary Avenue". There was WAY too many choices.

We had to walk all up and down the street before we could decide.

There was this unique exhibit with sculptures made

of scrap metal. This was a skeleton playing a guitar.

Everything in this exhibit was kinda creepy.

After the Cherry Creek Art Festival we hit up the movies to see Transformers. We'd been putting off seeing this movie since Will had heard bad reviews and was kinda disappointed by that - but the movie ended up being pretty good! Just kinda long. You can see Will wearing his Harkins shirt that gets us free popcorn (for the year) when he wears it to the movies.
After the movie we had dinner (grilled hot dogs) with our friends Bri and Bo then watched the fireworks and lit off a few fireworks at their place with a few others. They live only 3 blocks from us, but yet the view from their roof is SO much better! They don't have any trees in the way so you can see fireworks all over the metro area - we watched fireworks from the Mountains to Downtown and over to Cherry Creek, not to mention everyone's residential fireworks! Bri and Bo are the managers for the building they live in - so we were able to get on the roof when no one else was. It was great!

This is Bri (in her new sweatshirt I might add) with sparklers on her head.

She was sad she burnt a hole in the hood of her new shirt.

Me with the sparklers.

This is Bo - and you can kinda see how clear

the view was. We were 5 stories up so I'm sure that helped.

Kudos to Bri for making this yummy festive dessert!

It was a busy day overall but way fun! Happy Fourth of July - and we hope everyone else had a great holiday!

Fourth of July Weekend!

I love the Fourth of July! I'd have to say that it's probably my favorite holiday. There's nothing better than a holiday during the summer made up of sun and bbqs and chillaxing all day - not to mention celebrating our freedom as a nation and wearing/decorating everything red, white and blue! We started our holiday weekend last night by going out to mexican food and shopping. It was great!

Will picked up some new running shoes ...

since he's got the "bug" now too.

The most exciting part of last night for me would have to be finding a fireworks stand way in SW Denver!! Back home there are fireworks stands on EVERY corner - but fireworks are illegal here (probably because its so dry) but I was so excited to find a stand in some "unincorporated" corner of Denver. I really just wanted some sparklers since they're my favorite - but we bought just a few little extra items too.... because we don't want to get in trouble of course (since we live so close to downtown).

Our fireworks "spread"

Not as much as I'd have in Washington - but I'm happy anyway....

Plus I didn't want to shell out $100 in fireworks!

Today Will and I went to Cherry Creek State Park for some jet skiing with his dad, sister and friend Dwayne - his mom joined us later on in the day. It was pretty fun - and we got quite a bit of sun!! We were originally going to go camping this weekend - but decided it would be more fun to stay around here and do some of the things we don't normally get to do.

A lovely photo of Dwayne and Will - hamming it up of course.

Grilling burgers for lunch.

Relaxing ... pretty much what we did all day : )

This would be Will, Dwayne and Shannon in the pic.

I think I got the most sun.

This is me near the end. I got quite red - mostly my shoulders and arms.

These are the skis - and our "spot" for the day.

I think I got the most sun since in the bottom left corner of the next pic you can see the lounge chair/floaties that I laid out on most of the time, while everyone else was sitting higher up on the beach in the shade (as in the pic earlier) Maybe next time I'll sit in the shade (probably not).

Shannon and Dwayne headed out:

In the parking lot at the end of the day:

This is later in the afternoon - chilling at home.

You can see how red I got.

We were inside because of the next photo......

Lovely Denver Summer Thunderstorms.

This one was MAJOR and this doesn't do it justice.

The cracks of thunder were setting car alarms off and freaking our cat out!

More rain...

We were smart enough to drive to Chipotle right during this storm so we got to drive through seriously flooded streets! Just running to and from the car made us soaked - and we were only about 10 feet from the door! One hour later it was sunny and totally blue skies again. Lovely. Good thing we left Cherry Creek just an hour before this storm. Hopefully our sunburns calm down before tomorrow because Water World is on our agenda!

And Just for Fun.....

This is Abby in what we like to call "her apartment". We got it so she would stop clawing the end of the bed - but since we got it for her she spends more time laying in it than hanging out with us! (She also doesn't claw it - she only sleeps on it .. and yes she still claws the bed).

We love her anyway.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!