Froth of July

We kept the second half of our long Fourth-of-July weekend low-key...

Riley had Kassie over for a few hours Monday afternoon; then the three of us grabbed some pizza from Bambino's for dinner that evening and just took it easy around the house.

Tuesday (the actual fourth), we headed over to my parents' to get in some pool time—in the rain, because it turns out that getting wet while swimming isn't a super-huge deal ;)

About six seconds in, I started taunting Riley that I had "the good raft"—because, if we weren't going to spend the afternoon battling over it, then what was the point of even coming?

She took the bait. And suffered the consequences.

My mom even came out to spectate...

See that guy bullying a 13-year-old girl? That's your Uncle Kevin.

Yeah... and some day soon, YOU'LL be next, Pukes.

Finally, I wrapped Riley up into a pool-raft burrito and threw her across the pool. She admitted defeat and swam away in shame...

But then she realized she could do pull-ups on my arm, until the rain finally came and we had to take cover...

Suddenly, Riley said she didn't feel so good...

Athennia and I looked at each other and nodded with appreciation.

Later on, my dad made barbecue chicken for dinner, and Kelly brought cupcakes, strawberry streusel, peanut butter cookies, and cookies-n'-cream cookies for dessert.

I guess Riley was still salty about failing to steal the raft earlier...

Somehow, everyone even survived eating all that dessert—except for Liv's cupcake, which was the only casualty...

Oh well. Hannah had no qualms about eating it...

Before we called it a night, Athennia and Kelly made plans for us to meet up Thursday evening and take the kids to the carnival going on about half a mile from my parents' house.

So, imagine my surprise when my friend Lee texted me Wednesday evening...

What time do you want me to come over tomorrow, buddy?

In a desperate attempt to not be that jackass who cancels plans at the last second, I explained that I was hoping to take Riley to my parents' house to swim again in the afternoon so that we'd already be in the area and Athennia could just come right from work for us to hit the fair...

...But, since it was going to be in the 90s, would Lee have any interest in joining us?

As it turned out, he would!

So, it all worked out after all: I grabbed us all some lunch from Chic-fil-A...

And Riley and Lee finally got to meet each other...

And we all got absolutely scorched over the duration of a few hours in the sun.

Eventually, Athennia arrived from work, and Lee headed out since he had an hour's drive home.

Then Kelly, Steve, and the girls arrived, and we proceeded onward to the carnival...

Is everybody ready to piss away your hard-earned cash at an astonishingly accelerated rate?

Say YEAHHHH!

Here was $12 gone, right off the bat—and that didn't even include Riley's fare to ride along with Kelly, Steve, and Liv!

But, the ferris wheel offers a nice relaxing ride for a couple of middle-aged fools who haven't been on the Scrambler for a good 20 years and don't know whether or not they'd still enjoy the feeling of all their insides trying to be on their outside ;)

Plus, you get a good look at the people who fall for this scam...

We decided to stick to the ferris wheel, where agility and perfect balance only would've become a factor in the event that one of the support beams snapped.

Here's Liv, smiling because all the support beams remained intact...

...And Kelly.

We all tried to get Riley to smile too; but, this is apparently her first time ;)

Riley was (understandably) in a bit of a tough place, being there with only her parents. Since she wasn't too keen on riding anything by herself, we served as Liv's fan club while she did a few rides, and then we grabbed some dinner...

How about this half gallon of Cheez Whiz? I'm mildly curious as to what I would've received, had I actually requested "extra cheese."

Next, Liv rode the Jeeps (she's behind this girl in the front).

Also, check out L'il Dahmer Jr. one car back...

Liv thoroughly enjoyed being a backseat driver—because, who doesn't?

And, L'il Dahmer Jr. focused his attention on someone else...

Riley had asked us for ice cream midway through the evening, and we told her we'd stop at Friendly's or Dairy Queen or something after the carnival—where $30 would buy us more than one kids-sized cone for the three of us to split.

Sadly, the economy's circling the drain enough that all of those places close by 9:00 P.M. now, and we got back to the car to find that we had missed our chance.

But fortunately, there was still the option that everyone loves to hate...

Wawa!

We stopped at the little one in Holland, and I got to tell Athennia and Riley about my adventures there back in... well, my tee-ball years... when my [bio-] dad was still alive and teaching middle-school music.

He would often bring me along when he taught summer school, and this Wawa was one of our regular haunts where we'd grab a quick breakfast. Sometimes I'd get a package of Pop-Tarts, and other times he would just let me get something completely "breakfast-inappropriate" like a triple-pack of butterscotch Krimpets.

(Then I'd spend a few hours wandering around a vacant middle school by myself and sending my extensive collection of bouncy balls down the long ramp to the auditorium one at a time.)

Definitely too many instances of "don't tell your mom" to count. Hopefully Riley and I will get to rack up our fair share of those over the years, too :)