The Month of July

Here we are at the end of July and it has been quite an eventful month. I won't bore you with travelogue - mostly 'cause we didn't go anywhere - but I will bore you with some of this month's activities:

On the third of July, we went early in the morning to watch the balloon festival. They launch about 6:30a - we made it just in time - then they spend the next hour and a half dropping things on the ground in some sort of balloon competition. For the most part, the kids like the donuts that we buy for this occasion - it's likely the only time they get donuts. Then the sun rises so it's shining right in our face, so the kids get bored and want to go home. Perhaps next year we'll get there earlier and sit on the opposite side of the field...

Daughter Beppina got all gussied up for the fourth (which we actually spent up in Idaho with my mother - so I lied, this is a travelogue). The missus likes to do those fancy doos that make little girls sparkle, so she did this patriotic star for the 4th of July. We spent the evening ducking illegal fireworks that my brother shot off at a park near the airport. There were no casualties, but there were a lot of glowsticks, s'mores in mom's backyard, and even a night in the tent.

After we got back home, it started to get really hot. Believe it or not, it took until the middle of July to get hot here in Utah. When it gets hot here, we have just a few options: either we can while away a summer day or sprout wings and go crazy in the house. That's what son Giovanni likes to do.

Days like that, the missus doesn't have a lot of patience. Our children spend a lot of time getting ants wet.

An alternative which we decided to explore was a trip to our local reservoir. The water was muddy and it cost us $10 to park the van, but all in all, it seems the kids had a good time. Little Raphael spent a little time in the waves, eating licorice:

The other kids got their life vests on and dared to venture out past the weeds. I got muddy:

All in all, the $10 surcharge and the dead bugs didn't spoil our fun.

Finally, we spent the 24th of July in classic pioneer fashion: lighting off fireworks before dark so we could put the kids to bed before ten. There was some good homemade ice cream that got mostly eaten by our neighbors and friends - there was even a batch that didn't quite turn out, so noone got to eat it but us...mmm...

That was our month in a nutshell. Now it's back to writing the ol' dissertation for me (okay, I confess, I'm not a doctor yet...) and going crazy with bat-boy in the house for the missus.

Sleepy Children
1 Balloon fest
1 Fancy hair-do
1 Bat-boy adventure
1 Piece of licorice and some waves
Lots of ice-cream and fireworks
$10