July 4th Weekend

So our July 4th weekend started off on a sad note because this was my last weekend to fly and we had made plans to fly to Birmingham, rent a car and see my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I was sooooooo excited because it had been almost a year since I had seen many of them (if not longer!). Unfortunately, once we got to the airport, it was obvious that we were not going to make the original flight due to all of the holiday travel and there were very limited options to get there and back to Dallas. In the end, we decided to not go. I was SOOOOOOOOOOOO very bummed out. So, after a morning of crying my eyes out, we decided we needed to make the best of the weekend and just "spoil" ourselves. So that's what we did.
On Saturday afternoon, the three of us went to Going Bonkers in Lewisville. This is where we are planning on having Natalie's 2nd birthday party and we were curious to see if she would enjoy it more than last time. Good news! she really enjoyed it, actually she LOVED it! Daddy played with her almost the whole time and I took pictures. At one point, Daddy had to rest so I played with her in the toddler area and Rachel and I climbed around with her.

After that, we ended up going out to eat mexican food. It was so nice not having to cook anything. I wish every night was "going out to eat" night! We also rented Hot Tub Time Machine, Shutter Island, etc...(we don't watch movies often so it was a treat for us).
On Sunday, we went to church, did some grocery shopping and came home for lunch and naps. I watched a girlie movie while Nat took her nap and Matt did yard work. After that, we went swimming in the pool and had alot of fun.
On Monday, we went to the Dallas Zoo to see the new exhibit (Savannah). It was designed by Jack Hanna and was very pretty. It reminded me of being back in Kenya. Natalie had so much fun running around everywhere and Matt was such a trouper keeping up with her. They have a nice kids area that has a wading pool, horse rides, etc.. and Matt and Natalie enjoyed cooling down in the water. It was hot and we were ready to go home after around 3 hours.

Once we got home, we took naps and then headed back outside for more pool fun. Since we had planned on being out of town, we didn't have anyone over this year for a pool party but the three of us had fun anyway. We ended our weekend with watching Shutter Island once Natalie had gone to bed - it's a good movie worth renting (and not too scarey either).