4th of July and Weekend Recap

I had THE BEST 4^th of July I’ve had in such a long time this year! I went with Boyfriend to one of his brother’s houses in Nebraska. K lives on a lake and has a boat, and as soon as Boyfriend told me that, I was pretty much completely sold on the idea. (Not that I wouldn’t have wanted to go just to visit with his family, as well, but the lake/boat thing definitely helped! J)

We left for Nebraska on Wednesday. Because we had a six and a half hour drive ahead of us, I had gotten a book on tape from the library (Harvest, by Tess Gerritsen. I highly recommend it!), and had made a CD full of 80’s songs, since that’s Boyfriend’s favorite genre. We had a blast rocking out to some 80’s jams, and discussing the book, trying to figure out the plot twists.

When we got to K’s house, we immediately got all the kids together and headed out on the boat for a while. I was a little nervous about swimming, since I am such a freak about water where I can’t see what’s around me, but I got over that pretty quickly in favor of floating around in the cool water.

Marina on the lake

When we got back to the house, another one of Boyfriend’s brothers, T, had arrived with his family, so K immediately started in on grilling steaks and potatoes for dinner. Delicious! The rest of us enjoyed some drinks on the deck while K was cooking. I had a pretty embarrassing moment when I managed to knock an entire glass of Bloody Mary all over Boyfriend’s mom and her white shorts….whoops. I had met her for the first time that day, as well, which made the whole thing worse since I was trying so hard to make a good impression. Thankfully, she was pretty cool about it though, so I got over it pretty quickly.

On Thursday, we were of course out on the boat again! K had borrowed a pontoon from a friend as well, so we could get our whole group of 17 people out at the same time. We tied the boats together and got down to the business of enjoying the day! I, in typical Jordan fashion, managed to fall pretty spectacularly while trying to step from one boat to the other, and now I have a beautiful red, white, and blue bruise on the inside of my thigh. How very patriotic of me. :-/

Sunburned/frizzy-haired selfie

We didn’t end up going out on the water to watch the fireworks that night, since there really wasn’t enough space for all of us to go out there safely (and legally), but we were lucky enough to be able to spend the evening in the lakeside backyard of one of K’s wife’s friends, so we still got an amazing show. There were a lot of private fireworks happening at the same time, so we actually got to see fireworks from every direction! Fireworks are basically one of my most favorite things, too, so I was ridiculously happy with the show.

I tried tubing for the first time in my life on Friday. All of Boyfriend’s nephews that were there went before me, and did it beautifully – no falls, no flips, nothing. Then I came along…..and fell off twice. Yep. Even the little six year old did it better than I did! (#Embarrassing.) I got a few new bruises from hitting the tube and the water, but thankfully, (apart from my wounded pride) those were the worst of my injuries.

We came back from Nebraska on Saturday, and spent the evening laying low and recovering from our vacation. Side note: does anyone else ever need to spend a day or two recovering/relaxing after a vacation that was supposed to be relaxing on its own?? We were both totally drained from all the sun and fun we had experienced, so it was an early night for us.

On Sunday, my dad emailed me and asked if I was around so he could fly up here and say hi, so we headed out to the airport to meet him. We ended up going flying with him for a while, which was awesome. I always love flying with my dad.

Ready for takeoff

My lovely city

Daddy and his plane