The last few days have been just about more fun than I can stand! First, there was the 4th of July with our J-1 kids, and Zak has also been doing more work on our bathroom.
Mark had something to do on Thursday morning, so I picked up 3 of our girls and took them to see a little of the happenings for the 4th of July. I had our Bulgarian daughter, Aleksandra, and 2 Romanian girls, Denisa and Anotella. Traffic was heavy so I took them on back roads until we got to Bailey’s Harbor. There was a farmer’s market/fair sort of atmosphere and there were a gazillion people there! I found a parking spot in a lot nearby and we walked over to see what everyone had in the booths. There was a pen with an alpaca family in it, dad, mom, and baby. The girls took pictures of the baby because he was so cute. I found a booth that sold products made out of essential oils and I bought something there. We finally worked our way back to the food carts and one of the girls said they wanted to try a corndog. I looked at every food truck and would you believe it? There were no corndogs! This is the 4th of July, for Pete’s sake. Corndogs are as American as you can get! But they had to settle for iced coffee instead.
When it came time to leave, I tried going around the parking lot to what I thought was an exit. I had to squeeze between 2 vehicles that were so closely parked that Aleksandra had to watch on the passenger side and I watched on the driver’s side to be sure we didn’t hit either car. We just barely squeaked by. After all that trouble, I discovered that there was no exit there. There was no room for me to turn around so I told the girls to hold on and I went over the curb, across the grass strip, and down the other curb, scraping the bottom of my car all the way. Oy vey!
Then the girls said they would like to try cherry pie which is kind of a specialty here in Door County. I took them to Seaquist Orchard Farm Market where they sell everything cherry (jalapeno cherry jam, anyone?) and a whole lot of other stuff. The girls had fun looking around the store and picking up things to buy. They had to be at work at 2:00 and I finally showed them my watch that read 1:45, so they quickly bought their pie slices and I took them home (right behind where they work) with a few minutes to spare.
When I got home, Zak was working on our bathroom and Mark hadn’t yet returned from his errand, so Zak and I had lunch together and then I had a few hours to rest before the next activity… the fireworks at Gills Rock. Around 6:15, Mark and I arrived in Egg Harbor to pick up a former J-1 student who is now here on a work visa. He’s from Jamaica and his name is Clifton. I’ve known him for a couple of years because he goes to my church and he’s an excellent drummer!
We had plans to meet our Mongolian daughter, Casie, and her fiance (he had just proposed the day before) there, and I was trying to talk Rukiye through how to get there. Mark and Clifton and I got there in time to have food from the vendors and listen to some good music being played live. We got good seats up near the water. It would be several hours yet before it got dark enough for the fireworks. Clifton and I saw my pastor and his family there and I spoke with the woman who assigns us our Bridges kids and with another woman I know from Ellison Bay. That’s the fun thing about living in a small community where you keep running into people you know. It can also be a bummer for anyone who tries to talk about someone behind their back only to find that that person is actually behind your back. I speak with the voice of experience!
In case you didn’t get out to see the fireworks on the 4th, you can enjoy these:
And now for Zak’s work:
Because there is so much moisture in the air from all the rain we’ve been having, everything that Zak painted, stained, and shellacked took much longer to dry than he had anticipated. He had hoped to be done with all the trim today, but that’s all drying too, so he’ll have to finish up with the details next weekend. So far, it’s looking like the biggest selling point in our house is going to be this bathroom!