4th of July

I woke up Friday with a swollen eye. It wasn’t red, but it felt like pink eye and was swollen. On a normal weekend I would have let it play out and see what develops, but I didn’t want to miss out on 4th of July fun. So then I spent 2+ hours trying to get an appt at my regular doctor (closed) and then Amazon virtual, but it was being so buggy. I even had Matt help me, but it never worked. Then I checked our supplies and turns out I have a nearly full bottle of drops that are not expired. So I diagnosed myself and started the drops, and by that afternoon, no more swelling or pinkeye feeling. It probably wasn’t pink eye, but I’ll stay on the safe side.

I had an event at the Visitors’ Center that evening and debated going, but since my eye was fine, we headed to the temple. 

It was so hot.  

Our whole weekend had been kind of an unplanned messy one. We ended up leaving for the temple 20 minutes later than we’d planned, but thankfully there was zero traffic and we made the session we wanted to. 

The Family Patriotic Event was lovely. Our old DC North Mission Leaders, the Cookes had planned the evening. They had speakers and a program and for the first time in my 20 years as a navy (reserves) wife I got to stand when the navy song was played. I love a good military medley. 

I was the only comms person there, so I took pictures and recorded speeches. Yesterday I reached out to the military’s public relations handlers for approval on their pictures and received a quote from Brother Cooke and have already started my write up. 

The DC temple was my favorite when I was a kid and if little Michelle could see big Michelle I think she’d be pretty happy. 

Saturday was weird. It was just a weird 4th of July. No one wanted to do the same thing and it was so hot that I didn’t have big feelings either. I had talked to some friends and we worked on coordinating. I would have loved to go to DC and had been planning with Johnna, but they weren’t allowing chairs or canopies or anything on the mall and with security and the heat, we decided no for that. Then Alecia and I talked about plans and Sarah and I talked about plans, but nothing really fit. We went to the ward breakfast and that was fine. We talked about playing games or swimming with the Darrow’s but the girls started Hamilton and how could we leave then. We went to our pool and saw the planes flying their loops for the DC air show. 

Then we came home and showered and played a few games here and then headed to Solomon’s. 

It’s such a beautiful place, we had a nice evening. 

It was looking stormy and there was a lot of lightning and dark clouds brewing. 

We were watching our phones so before the downpour started we cleaned everything up, the Darrow’s hung out in their car and we hung out under the covered porch, and Delaney did handstands. 

It stormed pretty hard for a few minutes and that was that. 

But there was more on its way so they postponed the fireworks. We hung out until just before the next round of storms started and then made our way towards home.

Driving over the Solomon’s bridge was the prettiest it’s ever been. There were fireworks and lightning all over St  Mary’s, it was so cool  

On our way I looked at Facebook and a neighbor posted that there was a deer running around in the neighborhood and I was like, hey! That’s our backyard!

We met up back at the Darrow’s and played games where Alecia and my team lost by one point, so that was annoying. This pic was on Facebook because the storms were really pretty. Just an inconvenient night for them. 

On Sunday President Oaks had asked us to have a unified fast in Gratitude for religious freedom and to pray for parts of the world that don’t enjoy that yet. I love a unified fast, it’s so powerful. 

I subbed in primary with Cyndi and I taught the lesson, which was easy and quick. 20 minute classes are wild!

Matt grilled salmon for dinner and then we headed back to Solomon’s for a second try at fireworks. There was another chance of storms, but we went for it. We met up with Darrows again and this time we got our show. It wasn’t all the way dark, and kind of came in fits and starts, but it was beautiful and we were patient and got the little grand finale after the first bit and it was great. 

Happy 250th America. I’ll love you forever. 🇺🇸