Happy Birthday, America!

Celebrating another one, eh ole' girl? Well.. I'll celebrate right along with you (: 

amen? amen.

I thought I would start the holiday off in the most high-octane way I could manage:

sleeping in until 8:45am. 

ok fine, i'll go.....

That's RIGHT. You wanna talk about liberating? Welp, sleeping in until almost 9am in the smack dab center of an otherwise work-filled week is probably one of the sweetest little things around. Agree or disagree, I'm all for it. Now, before you start guilting me, I'll go ahead and admit that I leveraged the canceled alarm clock with an immediate trip to the gym. I thought it would be wise to kickstart the holiday by kicking myself into top gear. Oy. 

I left feeling like a soggy noodle, but it was totally worth it. I got home and managed something of a shower before stepping into a swimsuit for the first time in quite some time [errrrr... :/ well...]. Mo & Jimmy were at our place within the hour, and the four of us plus Syd piled into the car and set a course for Splash City in Collinsville. 

splash city!

I'd never been; Mo worked there for a couple weeks once when she was in high school, so it was something of a novel experience for everyone. It was a blast either way, and by the time we were ready to head home, Sydni was all but passed out before we even got to the car. Thanks, energy-sapping kiddie water park! Heh. 

this car.......

Back at home, we all parted ways for a short bit to recoup, shower, and gear back up for fireworks. Becky joined in for the adventure and we made with it - soccer family style [in Mo's van, woot woot!]. By the way, did you know there are built-in carseats in mini-vans nowadays?? I'm way behind on the times, because I had noooo clue this existed. Haha. I told ya, it doesn't take much to impress me. 

Anyway, the fireworks were quite the escapade. We had planned to make it over to one of the bridges connecting MO to IL and posting up there to view the fireworks. What we ran into instead was bumper-to-bumper traffic in East St. Louis. Our first attraction for the evening was a little red honda that decided it would neither proceed nor backup when the metro link warning gate started to fall into place. Instead, it just sat there, idling beneath the caution gate rested on its roof. Some people. Whoa. Notice the full metro car of photographers. There were just as many on the sidewalk and obviously in the cars behind. Hah. 

the dills!

Soooo.. After a futile attempt to illegally park, we finally found a still area by the Ameren facility to watch the dazzling lights pepper the sky. Sydni had herself a grand old time trying to name each burst of color before it dissipated back into the night. 

Oh, and I didn't snag any decent shots of what was transpiring at our post-up for the fireworks. I mentioned that we finally found some solid parking behind the Ameren plant. That much is true. It's also apparently true that in East St. Louis, it's "ok" to let your children [by children, I mean 12 and under] to set of bottle rockets and roman candles right up against the fences that house backup generators and power lines. I think I failed to catch any pictures simply because we were warding off the thought that we would ourselves become a firework while we were watching. Oyyyy vey. 

cori. mo. becky.

We decided to take more pictures of us, instead. Good times with good people!

Back to work in the AM. Awwww. Blech.. 

xo | cmd

The Perfect Midweek

Today was awesome :).

1. Early morning workouts! It's not really all that often that I can drag myself out of bed at 4:15 A.M. to get over to the gym, but I talked myself into it today - it was totally worth it.

oh heeeey wednesday morning

2. Roses are red, violets are blue... but roses are way more fun. :) 

These were on my car seat when I went to go to the gym; I ended up taking them to work to display. I hadn't expected them, but they sure are adorable! [Thank you, Joe!! ♥]

my roses! :)

3. Husband and daughter visiting for lunch?! I think so! Unfortunately, our regular sitter [Dawne] had a medical issue needing attending today, so she wasn't able to take Sydni. Joe decided to take the day off and hang out with her, giving them some much-needed daddy-daughter time. The two of them made it up to Glen Carbon for  my lunch hour; we grabbed a quick bite and spent what was left at the park playing :). It was gorgeous outside today, and we took full advantage of it. Plus, major major kudos to Joe for coordinating an outfit for Sydni that was not a halloween costume, rather one of the little sundresses my Ate Gazelle had sent. She was so stinkin' cute!

my loves on my lunchbreak!

4. After work, I made it home to find that Lara and Alex had dropped off some of the Relay for Life fundraising money for me to take to the ACS office. I am SO proud of Team Towerview!! We are going to be at our goal in NO time, which means I'll get to raise the goal, again. << Geeze, what an amazing problem to have ;).

hey, that's us! so so proud of team towerview!!!

5. Jarod joined us on a whim for dinner; we grilled out and hung out for a couple hours over dinner before he headed out and I made to it with cleaning this place up a little.

Like I said, happy Wednesday, right?! I couldn't have asked for a better one.

Let's see if Thursday can compare. :)

xo | cmd