July 4

Hey everyone!

I hope all of you had a great Independence Day holiday. We had a great day here, despite a small disappointment in the evening. Our plan was to spend some time on the beach here in Ocean View and then head downtown to the harbor to watch the fireworks. We had a great beach afternoon, watched a movie and then headed downtown. We got there in plenty of time and settled in on the Cruise ship pier. This pier is fairly isolated and I don't think many people know how to get there, so we had a great spot to sit by ourselves. The fireworks were scheduled to start at 9:30, but, as we sat in eager anticipation, the thunderstorm started rolling in. At about 9:40, we heard an amplified voice from out on the harbor saying that the fireworks were officially canceled. We couldn't believe that someone thought it was acceptable to cancel the 4th of July! But, we started the one-mile trip back to our car with the rest of the crowd, and then the rain started. Well, by the time we got back to our car, we were glad we had left when we did. We just missed a serious drenching. :-) They rescheduled the fireworks for tonight, so we're planning a mall/fireworks trip again today.

As exciting as the trip to downtown Norfolk was, the highlights of our day turned out to come from other places. First, we had an incredible July 4th lunch. We decided to try making mini hamburgers and cooking them in a pan: something we'd never done before. They turned out great, and when they were paired with sauteed mushrooms/onions and garlic toasted French bread, they were truly the ideal sandwich. I added jalapenos to mine, but somehow Jon thought this was overkill.

The second highlight of the day was an unexpected visitor. This summer, we have sometimes felt as if we are running a hotel for bugs. The building has a cockroach problem, and we tend to get a lot of pill bugs (roly polys) from the nearby flower beds. The other day, Jon killed a very large cricket in the bathroom as well. However, we had never had a guest quite like the one we had yesterday. As we were watching a movie, we looked over and were startled to see a seven inch lizard on the floor. Not as startled as it was to see us coming over to see him, though. He ran out in a hurry as soon as we opened the door. We did get some great pictures, though.

Well, I guess I should end here. I hope you all are having wonderful summers. We will continue to run our petting zoo/bug hotel to the best of our ability until we write again.

~Rachel