A 4th to Remember

Wish I could say it was going to be a good memory! Every year we go to my in-law's cabin for the 4th of July weekend. When we didn't have kids, we'd spend the night. There was more room when it was just 8 adults and 6 kids. When our three came along, it just got too crowded. We just planned on going up Saturday so the kids could swim and Holland could fish. It was supposed to be in the 90's, so it was perfect for a lake swim.

I, however, get cranky when it's hot. And there's no air conditioning in the cabin. And I get cranky when it's hot. Did I already say that? Yep. It was hot. I was down on the dock for awhile, pulling Egypt in and out of the water in her "hoop" (inner tube) and watching Holland desperately trying to catch a sturgeon off the dock and seeing Romania fly off the boathouse roof into the water. Things seemed to be going along fine until the crawdad races. Yup - they have crawdad races every 4th of July. The kids catch the crawdads, name them and then put them inside a circle underneath a plastic cake lid. The first to reach the edge of the circle is the winner and moves on to the next round. There was a bit of a problem with our craws. Holland caught about 8 of them and chose the three that our kids would use. He put them in his tackle box and brought them up to the cabin. Unfortunately, he didn't close the lid and they all got out. So about 15 minutes before the races, we were all scouring the deck looking for these guys. Only one was found - Holland's. The other two didn't seem that upset. Usually people have extras that they bring up. Sure enough, through some wheeling and dealing, both Egypt and Romania got their own crawdads. They named them "Sticky" (Egypt's), "Fire" (Romania's) and "Hunter" (Holland's). Then through some awful twist of fate, Sticky and Fire raced each other. Fire won and went on to race again. In another cruel twist of fate, Fire and Hunter raced each other, which had the potential of having a nasty outcome. I was standing on the edge cheering them both on and Holland kept moving inside the circle. He was all tense and moody and every time I touched him he jerked away and yelled at me (real fun when you're in a crowd of people). Finally, I pulled back on his shoulders to move him out of the circle and he kicked me in the shin.

This was not going to be a good day.

Without going in to all the awful details of slingshots, exploding children and missed dinners, we left at 6 and didn't even get to enjoy the potluck for the adults or the pizza for the kids. One thing they need to plan better is they always have the adult potluck at the same time as the kid's dinner. There's no way we can leave the kids by themselves so we have to trade off going to eat. But we didn't even get to do that. We came home, had sandwiches and cereal and I put all three kids to bed, not even caring that they didn't see fireworks.

I'm going on strike next year and we are staying home. No more stressful days spent with people who don't understand us.