"Fun" Fourth of July Weekend

This past weekend Cameron and I were excited to get a few days off school and work and just go do a few fun things for the holiday. As you can tell by the title of this post, things didn't exactly work out as well as we had planned.
DAY ONE:
We had planned on going canoeing with our friends Collin and Joy on Friday the 3rd. Well, we went canoeing.... it was supposed to be about a two-three hour trip down the river, but ended up being much quicker than that. We got there and sprayed ourselves down with bug spray because the area we were in had TONS of mosquitoes. So after we had been sprayed, we loaded the canoes into the water and got going.

Things went fairly well for the first little bit(minus the fact that I had completely forgotten how to steer and we were going from one side of the river to the other the entire time). As we got going there were more and more mosquitoes and it was getting cloudier and cloudier.

There were two different spots along the way that we had to get out and carry the canoes across the land and put them back into the water. Well, this is obviously easier said than done. We got out of the water fine and the boys hauled the canoes up a big hill, then we got to the other side and needed to put them back in the water. Collin and Joy made a graceful entry into the water, but then we thought we found a less steep place to put our canoe in... long story short(er), I got dumped out of the canoe and straight into the swampy,freezing cold and disgusting water. I was soaked and freezing.

About ten minutes later it started to thunder and lightening so we decided we better get out. We thought "no problem, we will just get out and eat lunch and wait it out". Well when we got out it started to downpour and we were all soaked. We tried to get under cover but everywhere we went had TONS of bugs and I was getting bitten like CRAZY. Well, we quickly jumped back in the canoes and head back to our cars. We were all soaked and I was shivering because I was so cold, but we got back to our apartment safe and sound. It was still a fun mini-trip and we laughed A TON about how it ended up. Thanks guys!

The boys before getting into the water


Collin and Joy enjoying the beginning of the trip


Collin pushing the canoes up the steep hill we had to cross


Cameron pulling the canoes over the hill just before my infamous swim in the river


Joy spraying collin with bug spray while we were trying to wait out the storm


DAY TWO:
Saturday Cameron and I decided we were going to head to Idaho Falls for the day and watch the big fireworks show they have there. It is right over the river and was supposed to be awesome. Well, we heard you had to go WAY early to get a good view of the fireworks. We got there at about 1pm and laid out our blanket. We didn't even get a good spot at first cuz there were so many people that marked off spot with string!!! How lame is that? so we laid out on our blanket and then were like "ok, only NINE more hours to sit here for a 30 minute show, no big deal". Well, we were dumb and didn't bring ANYTHING with us to do. We brought snacks and that's about it.Luckily, there were a bunch of drunk guys that were pretty entertaining(minus the fact that they smoked the ENTIRE day and we could hardly breathe). We were bored out of our minds the entire day and it was SO hot. I totally felt me getting burnt UNTIL... it randomly started pouring down RAIN on us. Seriously, our luck... Anyway, Cameron ran to the car and grabbed our umbrella and we both crouched under that and tried (unsuccessfully) to not get our blanket soaked. It only rained for a little while and then we were back to trying to think up things to do. We resorted to playing car games like I Spy and 20 questions... lame, I know. Well, we somehow sat there and saved our seat for the WHOLE day and then about a half hour before the show they shut down the street right behind us and people just walked up right then and sat right behind us with the SAME view that we thought we had to reserve ALL day. That was a bit frustrating for sure. we found out that Kory and Melanie were doing fireworks at their house and Kory texted Cameron seeing if we wanted to come, but at that point we didn't want to leave since we had been there waiting for that show so long. Anyway, it was a good show in the end and was beautiful right over the water, but Cameron and I agree that the best part was the drunk guys that sat next to us all day. They made the funniest comments during the show, it was hilarious. I think by the end of the day we kinda wished we had gone over to Kory and Mel's(especially when we heard about all the happenings over there). It took over an hour to get home, which I guess isn't too horrible, but by the end of the already long day it seemed very long.

Getting rained on

Our view for the whole day... not too bad


Fireworks

Us


DAY THREE:
Sunday Cameron had to teach in Elder's quorum so he got up at like 4:30 to finalize his lesson plans. I had a HORRIBLE nights sleep because I had over 90 mosquito bites from the canoeing on Friday. My legs and especially my back was COVERED. Everyone else only had one or two bites... I think mine was so much worse because I fell in the swampy water. Anyway, I scratched my back so much it was bleeding and I was miserable at church. As soon as we left church we went straight to Walgreens and asked the pharmacist what we should do. He was like "wow! you really did get bit huh?" uh... yeah. So he told us to get some anti-itch cream and spray and see what worked better. Thus, the rest of the day was spent in agony while Cameron sprayed me and put the cream on the bites. It itched so bad every time he put anything on them.

Sorry, these are kinda gross, but this is my back on Sunday. And no, those lines are not stretch marks, they are SCRATCH marks. Cameron kept telling me not to scratch them, but obviously I didn't listen.