Weekend Recap

Hi, friends!  Hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend!

We have been celebrating since Friday and today I wanted to recap and share with you all.  Grab your coffee or Dr. Pepper and settle in, it’s a long post!

Friday morning Chris went to work at Teen Challenge so the girls and I headed out for a day together at Poplar Bluff.  We met my mom and nephews at the movies to see Despicable Me 3.  It was a very cute movie and we had way too much popcorn and soda!

After the movies we headed straight back to Dexter.  Elizabeth was invited to a sleepover and Emily was having Blair come and spend the night.  We dropped Elizabeth off at Macie’s birthday party sleepover and picked Blair up and headed home for the evening.

Emily and Blair swam, made slime, made brownies, and played and played and played.  They are so sweet together.  Chris weed-eated the yard while I mowed.  Wild Friday night!

Saturday morning Emily and Blair were in the pool by 9:00 in the morning!  I sat out there with them and read while they swam.  After swimming, we took Blair home and picked Elizabeth up from her sleepover.  She had a great time!

After I got both girls we headed back home so they could rest for a little bit and I could catch up on some laundry.  The girls were really lazy while I cleaned the house.  Happy was my buddy and followed me wherever I went.

We headed to Doniphan that afternoon.  We wanted to go check on the progress of mom’s house and see my family over there.  My uncles and aunts had once again been working on mom’s house all day.  It is looking SO good!  I am amazed at the transformation.  We didn’t really help with anything that day because we couldn’t help with laying the floor and putting up doors.  We did enjoy visiting with my aunts and uncles while they were there.  They all left around 5:00 and then we took mom with us to eat supper.

After supper we went out to my sister’s house.  The girls set off some fireworks with their cousins while we all sat on the back deck and visited.

Later that evening, we all went to the city of Doniphan’s fireworks together.  Their show is a lot different than how it was when I was growing up at Doniphan, but they still did a great job.  The girls loved being with their cousins to watch the fireworks!

Sunday morning we decided to let the girls sleep in since we didn’t get back from Doniphan Saturday night until around 11:30.  The girls both ended up sleeping until around 10:30 that morning.  Chris brought me breakfast in bed and let me sleep in as well.  It was a great lazy morning.

When we finally got ready we headed up to Teen Challenge in Cape for their big family day.  My father in-law is the Executive Director at Adult and Teen Challenge in Cape and always has a big 4th of July family day for the men in the program.  It is a great day for the men to let their family come and visit them.  They have bounce houses, cotton candy, popcorn, Kona Ice, sand volleyball, and a huge firework show that evening.

We had a great day together up there!  During some of our free time we rode the four wheeler and went and cooled down at Nana and Papa’s house.  Chris was in charge of the firework show for the night and I have to brag on him a little bit ~ he did an EXCELLENT job!  It was such a great show!

Monday Chris worked at Teen Challenge again and Elizabeth had spent the night with Nana and Papa, so it was just me and Emily in the morning.  My BFF, Cassie, came over and we worked on homework together for our Master’s class. We are almost done with our very first class!

After lunch, Emily and I headed to Cape to meet Chris and Elizabeth up at his parents’ house.  That evening they had invited a few workers from TC to come over for a bonfire and small firework show and we went up early to eat supper with them.

As soon as Emily and I arrived at Cape, she hopped on the four-wheeler with Chris to help him go check his deer cameras.

It wasn’t 5 minutes later, when I get this text from Chris.

I didn’t really see anything in the picture and I was standing beside my father in-law and showed him.  He immediately said that’s a rattlesnake and called Chris.  Chris told him it was HUGE and within about 4 feet from where him and Emily had parked the four-wheeler.  James and Elizabeth quickly jumped on the side by side and headed towards Chris and Emily.

I still didn’t understand the severity of everything, I just knew a few minutes later I heard several gunshots.  Thankfully, Chris and his dad were able to shoot the snake and kill it!  I’m so thankful that the good Lord was watching over Chris and Emily and let them notice the snake coiled up under that tree!  It could’ve been a very different situation if they would’ve walked a little farther!

The rattlesnake was the biggest and fattest snake I had ever seen!  My heart skipped 20 beats just looking at the thing! It was about 5.5′ tall and had 12 rattlers on it.

Chris and his dad ended up having a guy that works at Teen Challenge come up and help them drag the snake into the side by side.  They brought it by the house and both girls were able to touch it and learn a little bit about it’s rattlers and fangs.  It was a once in a lifetime experience to see that big of a snake, but I know I’m going to have nightmares for a while now!  I HATE snakes!

Chris ended up taking the snake up on the hill to let some of the men see it.  He laughed at how most of the men thought it was cool!  I didn’t want to get anywhere near the thing!  Chris cut the rattlers off and then took it way down in a valley to rot.

After the snake incident, we were finally able to eat supper with James and Lequeeta and then get ready for the bonfire.

It was a great evening of fellowship with s’mores and fireworks.  I got some snuggle time in with sweet baby Sophia and the girls played with their buddy, Baby John, so it was a great evening.

Honestly, by the actual 4th of July {Tuesday}, we were exhausted!  We hadn’t been home before 11:00 the previous three nights, so we didn’t have big plans for Tuesday.

We went over to Doniphan mid-morning and took my sister and mom their picnic tables.  {More on that in a later post}  My uncles were working on my mom’s house again since they were both off work.  They are trying to get it all done before mom goes back to work at the end of July.

We delivered the picnic tables, ate lunch, and looked at old pictures together.  Old pictures really make me miss my dad, but it also makes me remember all the wonderful memories we had together!

We headed back to Dexter around 3:30.  Chris and I just wanted an evening at our house with the girls swimming and being lazy.

It was really cloudy so we never swam.  Instead we let the girls shoot off the rest of our fireworks we had.  Our dog, Happy, doesn’t get scared by the fireworks at all.  Our neighbor’s dog, Paisley, does get scared so we loved on her while she was trying to escape the noise of all the fireworks.

After we shot off fireworks, we took showers and cuddled on the couch together watching the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks on TV.  It was a perfect ending to a very busy and wonderful weekend!

Are you still with me?!?!?!  HA I warned you this was a long post!

I took SO many pictures over this long weekend, but I forgot to take a selfie of all 4 of us.  I’m going to leave you with one of just me and Emily having fun on SnapChat.

I pray you all have a blessed week!

~Jen