Holy Crap I Didn't Blog About The 4th Yet

You'd think that with my new iPhone I'd have no problem at all keeping up with blogging. My requirements are pretty easy: at least one blog a week, describing what I did that weekend and possibly the week before, plus occasional random entries with pics of the kids and what-not. The problem is that as cool as the iPhone is, it sucks for composition. It just is not the tool for doing more than small bits of typing. It's made for tweeting, not for blogging.

Anyhow, our 4th of July weekend started on Friday. We packed up the van and ventured west to Willmar, MN, where my cousin Andrew has a house out in the country. He's done a lot of remodeling work on the place; it's really nice. Griffin always has fun there because Andrew's son Drew is close to Griffin's age (almost a year older). We hung out there that evening and let the kids go crazy playing in the yard. Then we drove over to Prinsburg, MN, and watched fireworks display #1. After that we went back to Andrew's and watched fireworks display #2 in his backyard. We slept in a guest room downstairs.

On Saturday morning we got up, had some yummy breakfast, and started packing up our stuff. We put up our jumping house for the kids to play with while we were packing. Griffin and Drew dug into some watermelon:



We had our stuff all sitting outside ready to go in the van when it got very dark outside, then started to POUR. We got most of our stuff packed without it getting too wet, but it was raining really hard. We decided to let Griffin run around in the rain and mud - he had a blast!

After cleaning up and drying off we drove to Benson, MN, to Dina's uncle's place. He hosts a family gathering for the 4th every year, and it's always a lot of fun. This year was no exception. We had lots of great fire-cooked food and a very relaxed time hanging out in lawn chairs and letting the kids play with squirt guns and water balloons. And tent boxes:



At night Dina's uncle lit his bonfire to burn all the brush he'd cleared in the past year. The fire was enormous - the tops of the flames were at times above the tops of the surrounding trees. I had the twins in the stroller, and they were throwing old aerosol cans into the fire as well, so I kept my distance. Here's a pretty low-quality video of the top of the fire from about 100 yards away:



We also got fireworks display #3 later that night. Rohan slept through most of it, but Caden loved it - he clapped after every burst. :-) We camped there that night, which we haven't done in a while, and it was nice to do so again. The twins didn't sleep very well, though, so Dina got very little sleep.

Sunday was all about packing up and heading home. We stopped by to say hi to my dad quickly, and stopped by my mom's place, but she was out of town at the lake cabin. We drove up to Dina's dad's place in Glenwood to drop off a present and install a printer. Dina grabbed a quick catnap, and then it was off to the freeway and back home!