05 July 2010

Happy Birthday USA!

Well, I hope you have had a happy 4th of July.  This is one of my favorite times of the year.  When I was younger, we would go out to the lake and spend what seemed like all week for Fourth of  July.  We commonly camped out at the park for the TXU employees out by the power plant on Lake Bob Sandlin in Mount Pleasant, (coincidentally, across the lake from my husband's family land was/is and their lake lots.) Back then I didn't realize that we were camping in just about the closest thing to a free vacation as ever, but it was a lot of fun for us and I love having those memories of always going out to the lake. Ahhhh, to vacation to the smells of burning coal and bbq, and swimming in a lake that would dye your white swimsuit a rusty orange color! (PS: Don't ever wear a brand new swimsuit out to Lake Bob Sandlin---it won't stay new for long.) A lot of our family lived pretty close to the lake so every year we'd camp out at the lake with our close family friends Kenny & Karen and then our family would all come out on the 4th and we'd have a big get-together. Another great part of this time was my birthday.  My birthday was ALWAYS spent out at the lake, but during these family gatherings, meant I had a family birthday party as well. :)  Last year I told my mom I wanted to be out at the lake this year for my birthday, and she was relieved to hear that because she felt somewhat guilty for making me spend my birthday out at the lake all the time---she thought I got tired of it.  Little did she know---I loved it.  It always made my birthday seem special.

Well, we didn't end up at the lake this year for my birthday as I hoped. (We decided earlier we would just stay here since we were supposed to be buying a house, but when that fell through it was too late to make other plans of reserving a camp site.) We still were able to have some fun though.  This year, Cliff and I went to Austin and stayed a couple of nights in the Renaissance Hotel in the Arboretum, then we decided to go to a "Jorth of July" party at some friends' house in south Austin.  (Just imagine a whole lot of people dressed in jean shorts and t-shirts and you get the idea---it was super fun!)  Here's an image from the bar at the hotel that I grabbed about 7am yesterday morning while an alarm was going off--so I was unable to go back to sleep!


Cliff and I always enjoy driving around Austin when we are there because there are so many pretty areas.  Yesterday, we climbed up a cliff and took some pictures of an incredible bridge over the Colorado River on the Capitol of Texas Freeway. 



I haven't really had a chance to go through the pictures from the party yet, but hopefully I'll have a few good ones to share. I hope you had a great weekend and a good week coming up!

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