Fourth of July Wrapup

After yesterday's bike ride, we headed down to my parent's house for the Smithson family 4th of July BBQ. As always, the food was fantastic and we had a great time. I spent another hour or so hanging out in the pool with some of the family friends... it's definitely been a wet weekend!

Yesterday's festivities ended with a migraine at about 2am. Not entirely sure what caused that one, but I suspect that hanging out in the heat drinking beer and caffeine may have had something to do with it. Needless to say, this morning is pretty much shot thanks to the migraine hangover. Mike and I did make a trek down to the game camera as it's been a couple weeks since we've checked out what was on there. Unfortunately, the batteries went dead sometime around 6/23, so we only had four pictures. In fact, I'm pretty sure that for the last couple weeks the mountain lions have been dancing in front of it, knowing it's off. There's a ton of turkey poo around there as well, so we missed some bird pictures.

I'm lucky enough to have today off, so I plan to spend the rest of the day just hanging out with Mike and Shadow. We don't have any real plans beyond watching today's stage of the Tour de France. We did start up our own Tour de France fantasy cycling team - if you win the overall competition you win a trip to next year's Tour! We are planning on going anyway, so winning the trip would be awesome! It's a fun game to play even if we don't win. You basically pick 15 riders and can have 9 of them active for each stage. They get assigned points based on where they finish and if they're wearing any of the major jerseys at the end of the day. We'll see how we do!

An American Independence Day Tradition

Yup, that's right, we're watching competitive eating. It's on ESPN right now and again, I find my self both disgusted and in awe. The best part is hearing the announcers say things about the competitors like "They've really made a huge contribution to the sport". Seriously? The sport? I suppose it is trying on your body, but if you compare that to, say the dudes riding 21 days in the Tour de France, I hardly think they're even close. However, some of the stats are pretty impressive. For example, one of the guys ate 275 jalapenos in like 8 minutes.

This morning we went for a fantastic bike ride. It's the same road that we were on last week, but this time we went earlier and I didn't have my mocha first. I think both of those were good decisions. We added some distance this time, so we ended up at roughly 16 miles with a total of 1,200 feet of climbing. I felt great when we got back to the truck!

Yesterday we went to the Blankenheim's house for their fourth of July BBQ. It was a blast - Nicki, Sheri and I brought our bathing suits and spent about an hour playing in the pool with the kids. It's been forever since I've just done handstands in the pool or did tube races! Today we're headed to my parent's for their BBQ... that's right, we've had three solid days of food, fun and fireworks!

Cameron Park Fireworks

Well, it's July already. I can't believe how quickly this year is flying by! It seems like just yesterday we were in Seattle getting engaged and now we're under the 4 month mark until the wedding!

Yesterday kicked off our 4th of July weekend extravaganza. We headed out to the Cameron Park Summer Spectacular. It's held at Cameron Park Lake. It was a pretty cool event - they had arts & crafts booths, lots of yummy food, beer booths, live music, contests and a fireworks show. It was actually one of the better fireworks shows that I've seen... it was long, full of cool and pretty fireworks.

I have to say the most spectacular part had to have been the hot dog eating contest. The winner managed to eat six hot dogs in under three minutes... it both awed and disgusted me all at the same time. I think the part that was the worst for me was the guy who was dipping his whole hot dog and bun into his cup of water before eating it. Doesn't he know that mushy bread is incredibly gross?!

We've got a lot more in store for the weekend - stay tuned!

Happy 4th of July!

Hi all!

Sorry for the late post - there was just too much fun being had!

First off, HAPPY 4TH OF JULY! I hope you've all had a very fun and very safe day! We had a little get together at my house today - a group of family friends. It was such a blast! Mom and Dad cooked up an amazing meal (BBQ chicken, BBQ corn, fresh fruit, baked potatoes and salad). We sat around and sang, did some swimming and just had an all around good time. After that I went out with Tim and his parents to watch a fireworks show in Lincoln. Honestly, it was probably the best show I've ever seen. It was around 50 minutes long and had three fake outs - where you thought they were going into the finale, but they didn't. The weather was perfect - it was warm and breezy. Couldn't have asked for a better night!

I'm sad to report that tomorrow is my first day back to work. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, it's just that it's so hard to go back after 10 days of vacation (yes Tim, I know, I lead a rough life...). I checked my email the other day and was up to 957... we'll see what it's at tomorrow morning. However, I do like the concept of a 3 day work week...

On that happy note, I'm off to bed!