fourth of jew-lie

This weekend was great!

I had a serious boatload of homework to catch up on this weekend. I thought "not a problem. Nate will be home monday, I'll do homework all day sunday and be ready to hang out all day monday."

not so.

Nate came home sunday afternoon! He came over to my apartment and asked me and Janessa, "what are you girls doing tonight?"

The smart answer would have been "homework" but we are not smart and said, "nothing!"

So we ended up going to Tetonia with Nate and his best friend Nathan.

Tetonia was GORGEOUS. I could be happy living there, I think. We slept at Nathan's aunt's house Sunday night (I say "slept" but two and a half hours is more like a nap. We had fun roasting marshmallows and stargazing and talking and laughing and playing phase 10 though, so it was worth it) and monday got up at five and drove to Driggs for the hot air balloon show.

They ended up canceling the show because the weather wasn't good for ballooning, but we got to talk with some really cool people! The guy getting jumped by the horse is Ernie. Ernie is pretty legit. Speaking of legit, as much as I love my (Phil's) camera, I felt pretty un-legit in that crowd with my Nikon D70. After the 3 millionth Cannon 5D Mark II, the handful of Nikon D700's and all of the L series lenses I saw, I just kept my head down and tried to snap pictures without anyone noticing what camera I was using.

Anyway, we had our own tailgate breakfast on the sailboat in the back of Nathan's truck

And cheered for the one brave soul who sent his balloon up

After that we started driving out toward Palisaides and the group indulged my photographer weirdness and stopped so I could explore this old school house.

Once we got to the Palisaides, we were all pretty pooped, so we took a little nap in the truck, then put the sailboat in!

(if you've made it this far, congratulations and pat yourself on the back! Sorry, this is almost over. It was a long day!)

The weather was gross and rainy so only the boys went sailing.

Then it was back to rexburg for shower, food, homework in rapid succession, and we were off to idaho falls for the "biggest firework show west of the mississippi" (pish posh)

It was good, I missed watching fireworks over Lake Coeur d'Alene, though.

Getting home was crazy, obviously, and involved some near accidents (including, but not limited to, nate almost falling out the back of Ali's car), but we finally made it!

And that was my independence day!

I seriously love this holiday, when the fireworks were booming and "Proud to be an American" was blasting...God bless the USA.