Our Independance Day

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July holiday. Our was very nice, though a little hot.

We started yesterday out by installing a new window a/c unit. The old one that cooled the downstairs conveniently died around 8 p.m. Tuesday night. Thankfully we were getting ready to go to bed and would be in our bedrooms for the rest of the night.. which have their own a/c units.

We gave a quick call to the landlord who told us to go buy a new one and deduct it from the rent, which we did first thing yesterday morning.

Then we drove to my parents, who live about 45 minutes away. My mom and I grabbed our cameras and headed to an area called the Missouri Bottoms to take some photographs. We found an amazing old cemetery with a mausoleum to photograph. It was on the side of a bluff so we also got some great vista shots. It was beautiful up there! It was also interesting examining the old tombstones. Many dated back to the revolutionary war. Most of them were limestone and were crumbling or cracked. Several were broken. It made for some interesting pictures.

While there my camera broke. The shutter button just popped off. Thankfully we found the button and the spring that goes underneath it. But the rest of my photos for the day had to be taken with the button taped on. It proved to be a challenge. I have to look at my warranty today to see what the process is for replacing it.

Back to our morning photo trip...

We then went to a beautiful little country church and took photos of it. It was classic! I tried several angles and I'm pretty happy with the results.

We went back to my parents where the rest of the day was spent eating smoked ribs, chicken and bologna. (OK.. the bologna was just something my dad wanted to try. It wasn't bad.. I tried a couple of small pieces, but it wasn't great. I don't like bologna. Most of it was thrown away. I guess no one else was too crazy about it either.) There was also baked beans, corn on the cob and fruit covered in a blueberry wine glaze, but I didn't have any of those. :0)

We also played one of our favorite games in the back yard - Washers! We always have a good time and everyone gets involved.

As dark approached we packed up the kids, cameras, and folding chairs and headed to the park for the fireworks show. It was a lot of fun and I got a few good shots there as well. Here is one of my favorites from last night:



The photo I used for the post below was one I took last year.

So that was our 4th of July holiday. We fell into bed exhausted last night.. but we'd all had a great time.