Fourth of July and such

Here's the summery of my week: Last Saturday, we blinked and the computer shut down. We were the lucky family who got an electrical "bump" while Windows was getting an update on the net which corrupted the entire hard drive. Solution? Take it to Geek Box, pay $200 (worth every dime) recover all material, reload all material. The worse part? I finished all my stories for the newspaper three days early and lost all my work and the pictures. My editor was a trooper when I called her crying. Solution-- rewrite and reshoot everything.

On a lighter note: The holiday was very nice. We had big plans to have a family cook out but the Coombs couldn't make it at the last minute, the Bywater's were at the cabin and at 1:30 p.m. Rich and I headed over the to the church to do an impromptu service project we were hoping would take 30 minutes, but because of the holiday there were very few hands helping and it took 3 hours. When it was done, we couldn't move. Our bodies ached from spreading an entire dump truck load of mulch. We bagged the BBQ and headed to Iggy's with the kids.

Chicken fingers and ice cream sundaes always make a good meal.

On to fireworks-- we did very few this year. Our neighbors did it huge, and we let them. Nothing like watching good money burn!

Did I mention they only buy the highly illegal kind that sound like a car is hitting your house in Highland (sorry Todd--is it as fun to be the news as it is to write it?) So I sat on the porch telling my two youngest this was supposed to be fun.

When all the big bangs were over, Anja said it was the best day ever. Time for bed...

I did another round of volunteer hours at the temple open house to help out a friend. This time I went prepared: I took a book. Parking cars is not that exciting. Our last day to "help" is on July 23, yippee!