Shelter Cove: Episode 3

4th of July: Small Town Style

Josh, the girls and I were able to go celebrate the 4th of July weekend in Shelter Cove. Let me tell you, it was anything but boring. Small towns really know how to throw a party.

First we started out by teaching Laney how to shoot her Uncle's air-soft gun!

Totally kidding...if any of you know me WELL...you know I hate guns of any sort. But she does look cute. No...It isn't loaded.

Kadie, while enjoying a Popsicle...crunched down on something a little harder than ice. And spit out her second tooth! The tooth fairy only brought her $1.00 this time.

We were able to enjoy some AMAZING fireworks at our own convenience. Poppers and those confetti things? What a show! Seriously.

Some of the poppers were duds. Nick and Josh figured out soon enough that they worked better if you blew them out of your nose or slapped them on your forehead.



We made Laney clean up the confetti mess.

These were two of my favorite quirky shots of downtown Shelter Cove.

The town held a parade, and a fireman's lunch across the street from the bait shop.

There was even this cute man who was giving free train rides to everyone. So, we hitched a ride down by the sandy beach.

I have never been able to catch an entire parade in one shot. But, after all of the waiting for the parade to start. It was over in seconds...literally. This is THE parade.

Kadie waved hard to the one fire engine and all 5 cars in the parade. And then her, grandpa, Nick and Josh just decided to jump in the parade themselves. I think our family doubled the audience.

With the hot sun shining...the girls got to relax in a little wading pool and cool off!

Later that night we went to see the fireworks. Believe if or not, this town had some seriously amazing fireworks...and they went on bursting in the sky for more than an hour! My favorite were the ones that would squeal...because Laney thought that they were crying, and she felt bad.

On the way back, we passed a van ON FIRE, with about 10 people staring. I don't know how the 10 people fit in it in the first place, but they were definitely a little...drunk, or high, or maybe both. We almost just passed them up because it was just a tiny oil fire under the van. Since it was pitch black outside, and no reception on any of our phones, we offered to go down to the marina where the fireworks were and wave down a fire truck.

We pulled up, and yelled out of our car to a fireman (the entire fire department is volunteer in Shelter Cove).

Fireman: "What was that?"

Big Josh and Gary: "There is a van on fire!!!"

Fireman: "Fire!! Fire!!"

I swear you would have thought it was Christmas for these firemen. They were all just waiting for something to happen. Every single one of them jumped in their trucks. We followed them back up the mountain, and counted 1,2,3,4,5,6...7 FIRE TRUCKS going up to take care of one van. I guess no on wanted to miss out of the action.

It was a good thing, because by the time we got up there, the van was consumed in flames and the fire was headed up the hill to a home what was just being built.

My little bro Josh bore his testimony about it in Church the next day, and about listening to the spirit, which was sweet.

I guess Josh and I have to keep up our crazy 4th of July stories since the year we were blown up.

We finally got to the ocean the last day...

The guys went fishing of course, and when they came home we ate a whole meal. We seriously were living off of the land. We got the crabs fresh from a fisherman, and cooked them right up. It was my first time eating a crab this way, cracking the shells and all. Kadie turned down an offer starting at $5.00 to eat some crab meat...all the way up to $20.00. It was an experience, and soooooo good!

We ended with some games of Skip-bo and fun "fat" pictures of ourselves.