Independence Day! & Our Best Canoing Efforts Gone Wrong

How blessed we are to live in a country where there is such freedom...
I enjoyed my day being free!:)
Aaron and I, and Aaron's parents, spent the day at my parents' place
(It was my mom's bday and parents' 32nd anniversary as well!).
I moved out almost a year ago when I got married, and I miss that home so much... it's
so awesome when I get to visit! It is only 15 minutes away from where I live
now, so that is a very good thing.

We spent the afternoon down by the river..

(Dixie came along of course)

It's really relaxing down by the river... it's a couple acres from the house,
so it's like a retreat away from home:)
(A bit farther away than this... but you get the idea...)



After we hung out there, we headed up to the house to eat.... I love just even walking
through my parents' yard... It's so open in the back, and they're pretty into landscaping, so once you get
to where the house is, there are all these beautiful gardens all around
the house. Here's a look at the one with the patio...
That's our enclosed in the foreground (they also have an open bonfire pit down by
the river, but it gets more buggy down there towards August.)

The stairs to go up to the deck....

Which have a sweet hot tub on it! (See the river way way in the back?)

That overlooks the patio and the arbor, and the backyard


Here's inside their living room, with the new fireplace (overlooks the backyard to the river! Can't get enough of that river!)I love my parents' ottoman!


Aaron and I tried canoing (is that spelled right?) after dinner.
(Not sure what I'm doing with my arm...?)


I say "tried" to canoe, because it was a disaster!
Do you see that Dixie (the dog) is following us? Well, she's not a great swimmer, but
she wanted to come after us. The current was super strong, and she ended up getting kind of stuck in the current and going downstream a bit... but she didn't want to swim into shore, because she was so worried about us. My dad was calling her from shore, and I was calling her to the middle of the river where there's a sandbar, so it's shallow-- I thought we'd just put her in the canoe and walk it back (it was shallow enough to do that... the water wasn't up to my waist, so probably... 3 feet deep? I had to jump out and get over to her, because she was getting really tired and scared, cause she didn't know which side to swim to... and she's just not a swimmer. When I had jumped out of the canoe to go rescue her, my flip flop came off, but I caught it, and just decided to go after her with no shoes, since they'd just float away. Well, the Mississippi where we are, is super rocky.... and has broken clam shells and such... So I got her back to shore, and then back out to the canoe, but not without really hurting my feet... no cuts, thank God--just really painful jabs for many may feet...

Well, after I got her back into shore, and back out the canoe, the canoe had gotten pulled into the sandbar again. We tried to walk it over towards more depth so we could use the motor (you have to use a motor when going upstream on a river, unless you're seriously buff... I mean, REALLY buff. Like a gladiator.)
So basically....it was a mess. We lmost tipped it over multiple times getting in and out to try and get it to go the right direction (I'm tellin' you, the current is wicked strong). Once we were back in the canoe, Aaron and I were having a hard time communicating which direction we would go...we kept running into rocks, and a branch from a tree on the bank scratched me pretty good...and we were both wet from getting out of the canoe...Aaron was super frustrated, and I just ended up crying... haha!! It was just a mess. I mean, my dog almost got swept down the river not 10 minutes before that, and I think I still wasn't over that... so I think we should have just turned the canoe around after the Dixie incident, but I had insisted that we still try to canoe upriver.....
Sigh.... maybe next time it won't be such chaos! LOL! My feet are still pretty ouchy, but the night ended in a gorgeous sunset when we
left my parents':

When Aaron and I got home, I insisted we walk to the end of the street to see if we could see any fireworks (I love fireworks!). We couldn't see any, and then he goes, "I hear some behind us, over there, I think..." And we turned around and sure enough, we had an almost clear view of some fireworks. So we sat on our driveway and watched the whole show. It was a special 1st married 4th of July together:)

Here's my favorite shot for the day.... it makes me LOL!