The Fourth aka my birthday started off fabulous the night before when I won the closet organizing system from Home Depot. At dinner that night I asked Alex for something I’ve always wanted but never gotten. A whole lot of lazy!
When I woke up that morning he had seriously delivered. First the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was this lovely mirror. I have wanted one of these for a while (ever since our cats shattered my mirror from childhood) and I just hadn’t found one I loved yet. Alex found this beauty and assembled it so that I saw this first when I actually woke up.
THEN….he got up and wandered into the kitchen to make me breakfast in bed. I did end up cheating a little, I got up and took the dog for a walk, but I got right back in bed to continue my goal of being utterly lazy. Soon thereafter I had this little gem in my lap. It was glorious!
After this we went out to the stores – I wanted a fun holiday shirt, but we ended up at like 6 stores before we finally found one that was 1. Cute and 2. Super cheap. (It was my bday but no way would I spend $10+ on a shirt that would be on clearance the very next day.) Anyway, we finally found one at Target so we bought it and headed back home.
At home we gathered up camera, tripod, and ME so we could go to my parents! At Mom and Dad’s Alex helped me make some pasta salad for dinner (they like my version) before we settled down to just relax and enjoy time together. After dinner we went outside to mess with random small fireworks. I set up the camera and tripod so that when it got dark we could really have fun!
In order to “kill time” we went upstairs to eat cake / get presents / celebrate the greatness that is my life
. The cake was lovely and my favorite kind (the family knows me well) but I just couldn’t resist posing!
YUMMY CAKE ALL MINE!!
Finally it was dark and that meant LEGAL EXPLOSIVES!!! Rather than bore you with words here is a montage of fireworks.
I will add one note before this last picture clump. By this point it was 11:30 at night. We were trying to hurry it up because shooting fireworks late at night and on a week night does not a good neighbor make. Anyway, we THOUGHT we had picked a good one to end. It was supposed to be mostly colorful bursts. What it ended up being was LOUD bomb bursts, high above the houses, with a huge siren like noise near the end. My parents’ neighbor even came outside kind of grumpy. OOPS!!!
That was it – the last of the holiday. Dad did send me this picture the next day of the “aftermath” but y’all this is only a drop in the bucket. We cut out over half of what we had planned to shoot off because of time. I love my birthday!

























