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Saturday, July 04, 2015

Canada Day

We didn't actually do much for Canada Day. We do live in the USA, after all, and we didn't have any children begging to do anything fun so I believe we all took lovely naps and my mom and I tried to plan a girls' night out with Josie (but her friend Theresa came into town so instead Josie had a girls' night out with her).

My mom had previously texted Josie to ask if she wanted to go see a "chick flick" that evening and then a while later I texted her to ask if she wanted to go to the movies with us.

"Hmmm. Maybe," she texted back. "And, yeah. I will go to chick gil a with you guys."

Silly autocorrect.

"Hmmm. Chick-Fil-A," she texted next.

"Are we going there?" I asked. "We already have dinner made. You must be talking to someone else, too...?"

"Nope. I'm confused," Josie wrote back.

"No one said Chick-Fil-A," I told her.

She sent me a screen shot of her phone, showing the conversation she'd had with our mom, and must have gone back to read it herself while I was reading it because next thing I know she texted to me, "Ohhhh! A CHICK FLICK!"

"Hahahahaha!" I said.

"I was so confused why you would want to go there."

"Don't worry; Mom and I were confused as well."

"I don't even like Chick-Fil-A," Josie admitted.

"I've never been," I told her.

"It's so greasy!" she said and then she asked if I minded if she went to hang out with her friends, which was totally fine, of course.

Uncle David came over to hang out with us instead.



We had a red-and-white dinner—spaghetti with red sauce (so festive) and then we went out for red-and-white sundaes.



In the evening my mom and I took this beautiful baby to BYU campus to walk around the botany pond.


They've been relandscaping the area for a few years now. They had already made it quite pretty by the time we moved to North Carolina (three years ago) and haven't stopped working on it. There's a system of streams and waterfalls now and it's much more inviting than it ever was when I was a student (though it doesn't hold a candle to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens).

Here's a picture of me and Zoe by the new life sciences building and a rather starkly landscaped area (they're clearly still working on it). I think we stopped here because the smell of petunias was intoxicating.



That's one benefit (and a challenge, I suppose) to gardening in a desert—things only grow where you water. My mom's been watering her garden by hand and she has no weeds. I neglected my garden this year (I was busy growing other things—like a brand new person) and our whole yard is one big jungle thanks to all the rain we've gotten.

Anyway, it was a lovely walk.

And here's a picture of my mom bouncing a fussy Zoë. She really was blessed with a pleasant disposition overall, but even the happiest babies get fussy sometimes (for Zoë it's usually when she's abnormally gassy).


We got to see a few fireworks in the evening, of course, because they really like fireworks out here. They're allowed to set them off between July 1 and July 7 (and then again between July 21 and July 27). It seems like a constant barrage of gunfire the whole month of July. 

On Monday night my mom and I were out walking and my Aunt Judy drove by (she was on her way to the store) and stopped so she could see the baby and ended up walking with us for a while—so long that it started to get dark. We heard a pop and my mind immediately jumped to gunfire and I was getting ready to drop to the pavement, but it turned out to be a firework exploding. I blamed my on living in Durham; though we actually live in a pretty calm neighbourhood and haven't ever been too close to a shooting, I must admit that guns make me super nervous. It's one of my least favourite things about living in the States.

We were driving back to Salt Lake from Orem yesterday and Rachel saw a firework stand (they are everywhere out here) and excitedly proclaimed, "They sell black cats there!"


"Black Cat is a brand of fireworks," I explained.

"But it says black cats sold here!" Rachel insisted.

"Yes," I said. "Black Cat fireworks. Black Cat is the name of that brand of fireworks."

"But why does it say they sell black cats?" she asked.

"It doesn't," I said. "The brand of those fireworks is called Black Cat."

It took her a few minutes to get it. I blame the heat (we'd all been standing in 100°F (and then some) weather for a few hours).

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