{4th of July}

I am sitting here on an awesome Monday Morning. I say that because it is POURING down rain and has been for about 30 minutes. You have never seen a downpour like you do here.  PLUS, to make it even better there is lightning and thunder. That is what makes a downpour so exciting. The kids are sitting on the front porch watching the storm. I am getting a moment to blog. I love the sound i keep hearing of the rain landing on the patio and the thunder booming and the kids freaking out over the lightning and thunder. :)

Our fourth of July was tons of fun.  Here on base, they did the fireworks show the night of July 3rd. So, we kind of celebrated on July 3rd too. I found lots of July 4th music and played that over and over while i prepared our steak and veggie shishkabobs, with a black bean and corn quinoa salad, rolls, and fruit.  We ate our yummy food and just hung out until it was time to walk over to watch the fireworks. It was lots of fun to watch it together as a family, AND to be able to walk a short distance to get a great view of the fireworks.  They did it at Marek Park. Next year they will do it on the flightline, and apparently that one is the bigger and better show. We will be excited to go to the flightline next year.

We woke up July 4th and went to our branch pancake breakfast.  Our branch here feels like family to me. It's so nice knowing i have a branch family here.  We went and had bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, and pancakes and chatted all morning with friends.  We went home and prepared for our fun get together with our branch friends at Maeda Flats.  It was sort of a farewell to some good friends, plus a 4th of July get together.  We went to the beach at 4:00 p.m. and swam for awhile. It was low tide so everyone went out searching through the tidal pool and some did snorkeling. Around dinner time we started up a fire, and everyone roasted their hot dogs over the fire.  There were about 40 of us there on the beach. We had the beach all to ourselves.  I loved the smell of the fire combined with the smell of hot dogs, ketchup and mustard. That with the sounds of laughter and chatting, and the feeling of sitting back and relaxing. It was awesome. The sunset was BEAUTIFUL! It was amazing.  When the sun went down the adults pulled out the fireworks for the kids.   They all had sparklers, and some of them were hulked up sparklers. :) So, they were bigger and brighter than you usually see. There were about 15-20 kids running around the beach with their sparklers. You can see the reflection of it on the water, which was really pretty. The smell of the fireworks is heavenly. Is that weird?  It was just a great night. We lit fireworks that flew up over the ocean and exploded in the air. It was such a fun night with friends. Another fun memory made. I love it.

Then July 5th is when Shane and I went to the Kerama Islands with our friends.  And that story is in the post below this one....