Our Story, Our Life: 4th of July Weekend

This year we found ourselves in Central Oregon for the 4th of July weekend. Ever since I can remember and even before that, a group of my parents college friends and families always got together during the 4th of July weekend. For a few years in a row I remember camping with them at Crooked River Ranch, just outside Redmond OR. It was always a lot of fun seeing everyone, as they felt like extended family. It's been quite a few years since there was a large gathering of the "old folks" as i like to call them, but this year they had planned to return to Crooked River Ranch.
When I found out that almost everyone was going to come, I told Aaron that we should go. So we planned for it and at times I think I looked forward to that more than Rebekah's birthday. (I know that's pretty sad huh). It had been at least 10 years or more since I had seen some of them. Including Katie, who was just a kid the last time I saw her. Now she's entering her sophmore year in college!
We stayed in a cabin near the golf course and hotel, but spent the majority of our time at the hotel with my parents. If we ever go to CRR again, I think we'll pay the extra money for the hotel room. Not just because of the travel two minutes between the places we were staying, but because the a/c in our cabin sucked so every night when we returned it was actually hotter in our cabin than it was outside. As some of you know, it was in the upper 90's the entire weekend. By the time we were up in the morning it was at least 70 degree's outside. It was hot. But we had a lot of fun and of course Rebekah was the center of attention the whole time.

Aaron took Thursday off so we could enjoy one more day there. On the way we stopped to visit my aunt and uncle since they were not able to make Rebekah's birthday party the weekend before. We had a nice visit and lunch with them before heading on to CRR.
On Friday we spent the afternoon in Bend with Aaron's brother Jeremy and family. We had arranged a play date with cousin Isabella and Rebekah. We were happy to be able to share some of our vacation time with them.
On Saturday they had a small town parade at CRR. It was pretty good considering the population of CRR is about 4500 people, not including all the people that camp there or other things. We didn't go into Redmond to see the fireworks, because no one felt like driving anywhere. Besides, mother nature was giving us a pretty good show off in the distance, so that worked for us. We did watch some fireworks down by the church, where they gather everyone at the ranch to do fireworks. Rebekah had a good time watching them and wasn't scared of the noises or anything. She seemed pretty interested in the fire truck that was there, so the nice fireman opened the doors and let us take a peak inside. I thought that was cool, but she didn't have a clue.
It was a really fun weekend and I'm glad that we were able to go and see some old friends. We hope that there will be another gathering next year as it's always a good time.

Playing with Auntie Lael