pleased as punch: 4th of July & the St. Paul Rodeo

Us @ a beach called "Hug Point"

Wishing this weren't true, I will admit that perhaps there has been a time or 2 that I have tried to manufacture a picture-perfect holiday. The 4th of July this year was one of those attempts.

I heard about this darling little parade in the quaint coastal town of Cannon Beach. After the parade we could spend the Sun Filled Day exploring the tide pools and watching Fin run wild. We'd grab some smoked BBQ later that night and watch the fireworks out over the Ocean. Sounds perfect, right! Well, we got a really late start that morning. Even though I had packed the car up the night before, we couldn't seem to drag ourselves out of the house until 10:30am.

The parade started at 11 o'clock and was an hour 1/2 away. We had no hope of making it in time but I was determined to celebrate at the coast. We hadn't been driving more than 5 minutes on the freeway when Fin starts throwing up repeatedly (who knew she gets carsick!?!). I'm screaming at Chad to pull over and for a brief moment thought this is it, the trip's canceled.

she wanted to help clean the "mess"

Needless to say we headed home, threw the car seat in the wash, made sure the little one was OK and then headed out to the coast for a second time. It was freezing and rainy once we finally got there. Everyone was bundled in coats, but we still loved it! We loved playing in the sand hiking up to the look out point (in hurricane winds), diffusing toddler meltdowns, chowing down on cheap pizza and stocking up on saltwater taffy.

Apparently there was no such thing as fireworks over the coast in Cannon Beach (we were given bad information). So we headed home to light off some fireworks of our own. It was a great holiday... imperfectly perfect.

Finley is still petrified of fireworks

Here are some photos of the St Paul Rodeo. This was the first Rodeo I had ever been to and the first Chad has been to in 7 years. When he met me 7 years ago I was a little more liberal and couldn't stomach such a sport (think PETA). We had so much fun for the first hour. The kids loved it, Tucker was captivated and Chad was in heaven.

By the second hour we had fed Finley an entire licorice rope, a 1/4 of a liter of Coke, some Swedish fish, peanut shells, gum off the bleacher in front of us and jelly bellies from the bottom of the diaper bag. We were shoveling her full of pretty much anything we could find to keep her from disrupting the rest of the people we were sardined next to.

Someone should have warned us that we were just fueling the beast. We left shortly after she threw Chad's hat into the lap of the guy behind us while simultaneously slapping his glasses off into the lap of the lady in front of us. The real rodeo that night took place on bleacher C seats 1, 2, & 3.