Part 1 of the July 4th Celebration

Ever since I celebrated my birthday biking in Croatia I always feared that I could never have a birthday as great as that. But luckily, every year since that glorious celebration has been equally as wonderful. It sure does help that I've had 4-day birthdays for the past several years. I like this trend. This year's celebration went something like this . . .

I took the day off on Friday and planned a splendid day of shopping . . . just me, the gorgeous sunshine, my ridiculously clean car, and 60 miles of back roads to the outlet mall. It was spectacular. At first I thought it was lame to spend the day by myself, but I have to admit, I loved every second of it. I almost never get to go shopping leisurely with no purpose, but to poke around. I had such a ball, the day flew by and I filled one entire trunk up with loot.

Just look at those clean wheels.

I had to snap a few pictures of the car in this condition. After Karlo made me slave over washing and waxing it I decided I may never put that much labor into it again so I better document this. I actually tried to use the brakes as little as possible this day to keep the front wheels from getting too dirty. I actually thought about this while driving! Scary.


After shopping I took a really scenic drive along the coastline in Saybrook. I felt like I was a movie star and there should have been cameras following me for the insanely idyllic scene of the road along the beach. It really made me appreciate the sheer beauty of Connecticut (and my car). I took a quick stop at Dock & Dine for some refreshing Italian ice and that's where I snapped this picture of the seagull using my retro camera.


I got home and laid out all my loot on the bed. I felt like I just robbed a bank. It was such a thrill to paw over all my new goodies.


Then Karlo got home from work with a little brown bag. He reached into it and my heart fluttered. I thought, "Maybe he has something for me." I have no idea why I thought this, because I never do . . . but I was hoping. When he pulled out the Peppermint Patty I thought I died and went to heaven. I'm tellin' you it's the little things that mean the most to me. I devoured that thing in about 250 bites, savoring each and every one of them. I think it took me 30 minutes to eat.

Maybe I was just stalling because the next event of our night required me getting into my PJs and head outside. Karlo and I decided that we wanted to go camping this weekend. Now we've done a lot of different types of camping. Sometimes we camped while traveling via bicycle and that had to be the hardest. We had only the bare bones necessities, toothbrush, towel, sleeping bag, etc. It's roughing it for sure. We have also tried our hand at 'remote' camping where there is no running water, nor flushing toilets. I thought I would really hate that, but it wasn't all that bad. We took bird baths in Lake Tahoe and brought in our own water. I even got used to the outhouse. Then we upgraded to 'car camping' and holy cow, what a luxury that turned out to be. You can carry so much more stuff. Having our own car, packed with everything we could possibly need, was amazing. I thought this was my favorite type of camping . . . until we tried this new form of backyard camping.


Now you make think we are crazy to sleep in a tent when our house is just a few hundred feet away, but there was no traffic getting here, there were no noisy obnoxious camping neighbors, the bathrooms were nice and clean and the very BEST feature . . . . You ready for this? Our tent was equipped with WiFi. Oh yeah baby, this is the camping of my dreams. I had my little iPad, I could check my mail, surf, and we even streamed a Netflix movie. It just doesn't get any better than that!

Karlo made a perfect "Karlo" inferno (I mean bonfire). We roasted marshmallows and I had fun snapping some pictures in impossible lighting conditions. I would say I had the perfect day.