Miss American Pie complains

Independence Day is probably my second favorite holiday after Halloween. Okay, maybe it's actually tied with Christmas for 2nd place, but it's right up there in the top three. I love patriotism, American history, the Stars and Stripes, red-white-and-blue, summertime, and fireworks.

This year? I'm not feeling it.

The last few weeks have not been my favorite. The Mister has been heavily involved in the National Guard response to the tragic wildfires that have ravaged Colorado in the past few weeks. As such, he's been working 6:30 am to 8:00 pm (or later) most days, with no time off. That leaves me with the kids all day, every day, unless I pay a babysitter $$ to sneak out for an hour or two. I am trying to plan activities and outings for us so that we have a fun summer and don't just watch TV all day long. Porter has rather erroneously decided that he no longer needs afternoon naps, robbing me of my two precious hours without him in the afternoons. My house is a mess in every single place that I look, my Etsy shop has been neglected since February (even though I proclaimed that June was going to be the month I finally took care of it), I was an unheard-of WEEK late sending out a swap, and I'm generally feeling overwhelmed and under-motivated in every single facet of my life.I finally managed to drag the box of 4th of July decorations downstairs a few days ago, but didn't have the motivation to put them up before we left town. I LOVE my patriotic decor, so this is particularly sad and telling to me about my current state of mind.

And now, tomorrow is the holiday. We're still in Southern Colorado (The Mister of course couldn't get away from work to join us as planned) and planning to drive the 4 hours home to Denver tonight. I'm bummed because we have no plans for tomorrow to make the holiday fun. Because of the extreme fire danger, all individual fireworks in the State of Colorado have been banned. Ironically, there is still going to be a fireworks show in this tiny town that I am leaving today, but nothing at all in the Denver metro area. I look at the horrifying photos of the smoking ashes that are all that remains of nearly 700 Colorado families' homes and I completely understand the fireworks ban, but that doesn't mean that I'm not really disappointed. I mentioned before that I LOVE fireworks and I feel like without them, it's just another day. We have no family in Denver and it's too late to make plans with friends so having a party is out to fill up the evening hours where we would otherwise be celebrating.

The Mister suggested that we just stay the night here and drive home Wednesday morning, but then we would miss the 4th of July Breakfast and Bike Parade with our church friends, which as of right now is the only thing we have planned to celebrate tomorrow. It's not a big deal, just pancakes on the church lawn and crepe paper on the kids' bike handles (I guess I could reuse the decorations I made last year) but at least it's something.

I know that I could plan something fun for us to do to make the day special, but right now that sounds like so much WORK and I'm just feeling so blah about the whole thing that instead of doing anything about it, I'm complaining to all of you.

The photos in this post are from the day after the 1940s WWII Ball. My hair was still straightened so I decided to do Victory Rolls one last time for church. The dress is this cute one and I wore my red patent pumps, a vintage red enamel flower pin and a red flower in my hair. I played around with my photos in PicMonkey to get the black and white and the cute vintage-looking photo corners.