Have a nice Daisy..•¨❀: Happy Independence!

We woke up Friday and loaded up both the trucks

with probably much more than any of us 7 would need for the weekend. We started our trek east. After Erik's skillful and irritating☺ driving we arrived at David's sister, Zulma's, house,

who makes me jealous with her cute little 8 month preggers belly. I sure wish I looked that cute with either of my two poopies! David's momma, Adale, was anxiously awaiting us because that sweet little lady had been slaving over the stove all day making the most mouth watering pork tacos! Tiari is so spoiled, Adale made her a special bowl of salsa sin onions because she turns her nose up at anything that even remotely has traces of onion smell. Okay, not that bad but pretty darn close! After Erik and Tiari took a little catnap we headed to a reservation, which I can't remember the name of. We got to get up close to a family of deer,

not for very long though because Stryker kept scaring them away. We

walked through what was supposed to have been the home of old war hideouts but we didn't see any. Nikelis gave the gift of his slipper to the lake Gods for no real reason except to see it float away from us, his booteh paid for it. It

was so serene and beautiful, there is so much to see out here and every new place takes my breath away. Later that night we had every intention of taking all 7, 8 including Darrylynne I guess, kids bowling. Much to our disappointment the bowling center on Fort Eustis closed for the holiday. That seemed a bit excessive since the 4th wasn't till the next day and obviously people are going to want to go bowling that night. Well, leave it to Erik, Mr. Fix

It to punch bowling into his handy dandy Magellan. After twists and turns and loop dee loops we found ourselves in neighborhoods that couldn't possibly harbor bowling centers. Yes, and what's worse is, it wasn't one, but two; we humored Erik by letting him lead after his first attempt ran cold. Turns out the GPS, ignorant as it is, guided us to private bowling associations, exasperated and not interested in joining a league we all headed back to Zulma's house, we had a busy morning to wake up to, we were headed north.

I tell you, my kiddos just don't realize how fortunate they are. This is the first 4th of July I got to spend at

our nation's capital and my lil poops are experiencing it at such a young age, the glory of it all is that this is just the first for them, they will most likely find themselves back here later on reminiscing. Knowing it would be packed we tried to get there early so Erik could see most of what we already had. The kids couldn't stop asking when we were going to visit the Smithsonian (all of them!) but Erik was dying to see the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. It was a pretty muggy day making rushing around all that much more uncomfortable,

however the endless grease pits they had eased that a bit! There were hot dogs galor, the worst sangria I ever had, and mexi food that was severely overpriced; we swallowed it all with huge smiles! The museums were just as amazing as I remembered and the kids were still awestruck the second time around, as was Erik. We took a bit too long walking the mall, though, by the time we thought to find a suitable place to watch the fireworks we were all out of luck. Once the sky started to be lit up by the amazing spectacle of glitz we didn't care that we were standing. Our "oohs" and "ahs" were at an all time high today, another memory for the books. How lucky we are to be able to show our kids these truly incredible things/places.