Life with Zak and Rachel.: Fourth of July

Last week, Zak & I went to his grandparents' house in WA, partly for the 4th, partly for a surprise party for his grandpa's 70th birthday. His grandma has been planning this for awhile. Zak's family flew out from Connecticut to spend a week with them. So, his grandpa had no idea that we were all coming, and on top of that, his grandma didn't know we would be coming earlier than expected (Zak's family changed their flight time to get in earlier than originally planned), so double surprises for all.

We had a lovely drive to their house; it only took about 2, 2 1/2 hours to get there. Plus, it was very simple and we didn't get lost! And to make it even better, we were able to hook up with his family (who were coming from the Seattle airport) the last few minutes before arriving. We didn't want to ruin the surprise by showing up early, so we waited a few minutes at an intersection for his family.

It was a nice, relaxing day. We had some yummy salads and a beautiful cake, that I should've taken a picture of. We just hung around and talked, took some pictures, and ate food. We also wandered around the rows and rws of cherry trees and ate a decent amount of them (some of us paid for it more than others). And we also ate raspberries, right off the bushes! I was pretty happy. The only fruit I've ever remotely picked was on my family's traditional apple picking-Conference weekend in the fall (which I've sadly missed out on for the last four years ]: ). When night started to fall, a bunch of the cousins started lighting off fireworks. I'm pretty sure I've never done that or been around that, because ... it's a big suburban area back home, and I've always been in CA for the 4th of July. So it was exciting and new (and slightly terrifying at moments) for me! It was very cool, though. Zak and I got to light some sparklers a bit later, and we experimented with time lapse stuff on my camera. It was pretty great.

It was a great overnight trip, and we left the house with two large flats full of bing cherries, several containers of freezer strawberry (and a few plum) jams, and some bags of frozen berries. Thanks, grandparents! We are already enjoying the strawberry jam and boy, is it good. I grew up almost always having homemade jam, so I am happy to have it in my life again, instead of that store-bought stuff, haha!

Zak's parents and sisters followed us back to Moscow, where we made dinner that night. I got a little carried away and made a TON of teriyaki chicken skewers, but we just threw a bunch of them in the freezer to (hopefully) have later (I hope they survive). So we had a delicious dinner with them. Zak's youngest sister, Olivia (10 years old) stayed the night with us. Zak helped her play the game Little Big Planet; she really liked it! We set up the queen air mattress that my parents gave us last summer and put the new sheets and bedding we had bought a few days before. We heard she slept great on it, so hopefully when Jenna visits, she will too!

The next morning, Zak had to work (blah), so I got to drive his family around. I did my best to make our tour around Moscow interesting. Unfortunately, we are still new to the area and haven't done much more than work, so we haven't explored everything. I drove them through the U of I campus and downtown; we walked around the Co-Op for a bit and then headed to the mall, to pick Zak up for a long lunch. We went to the delicious bagel place in the little downtown area, and walked up and down the streets for a bit before taking them back to their rental car. We really enjoyed seeing them, even if it was only for a few days!

I didn't take too many pictures, but there are some fun ones below: