The Fourth of July

Whew. I just got back from mowing the lawn, and boy am I tired. We used to have a lawn mower that our neighbor gave us, but it broke down. It was one of those that has self-propel, when the wheels spin on their own. Well, today I had to use our old Lawn Boy, which takes much more man (or in this case, girl) power. I did it at ten-thirty in the morning. With hardly a cloud in the sky. And, of course, I had several of those common but extremely annoying problems: I accidentally wore my nice tennis shoes part of the time, instead of my already green old ones. The lawn mower refused to start every time I had to turn it off. I got a bug in my nose (yes, that is very gross) and ran face-first into a spiderweb that some dumb spider decided to build on the swing set. I myself developed green polka-dots from all the grass clippings that stuck onto me. I have got a sinus headache now. And it was so hot that I was only able to do 3/4 of our hilly yard. Anyway, it feels good to be inside where it is air-conditioned, all washed off.
These are some pictures of the Fourth of July. We watched fireworks in the hotel's parking lot. Lots of the younger cousins were singing patriotic songs at the top of their lungs. I got a recording of them singing, but Blogger does not support audio files. So I thought I would try putting their songs and some pictures in a Movie Maker movie, and uploading that because Blogger does allow videos. But no, that did not work for some unknown reason. I had also taken some really short video clips with my camera that I thought I would put onto my blog- videos of fireworks. But Mom's laptop does not recognize the format that my camera takes pictures in. And now all my pictures got uploaded in random order (just like yesterday). So...

The boys said that if I put pictures of them on the blog, I have to put on pictures of me. That can be difficult because I am the only one who takes pictures. But... Here is one that Nick (the up-and-coming photographer) took.

Various ways of singing "The Star Spangled Banner" on the top of your lungs.

Waiting for the fireworks to start. We discovered that a bright streetlight was right in our line of sight, but that was OK.

The hotel's "waterfall" as seen from the fifth floor.

The East Coast Rackers came to our house yesterday. I gave Rachel and Hope "drawing lessons". This is the only one that I got a picture of. Rachel drew it. She is really good at art- she just finished the second grade!

William and Gracie conducting some really loud singing.

Jackie looked a little cold...

And Hope was just plain cute.