happy 4th of july!

Let's take a look back through time, to the Independence Days of T&A's past...

2002: our first 4th of July as a couple. We were living in DC that summer, Alfred had just graduated. We walked around the mall and watched the fireworks from the base of the Lincoln Memorial. It was packed, and CNN was set up right next to us to record the fireworks. It was awesome.



2005: We were on our honeymoon in Spain, after Ilya and Mercedes' wedding. These pictures may not actually be from the 4th, but they're pretty close. We saw a lot of fireworks there, there were all these festivals going on and they had fireworks for every one. It was really fun. On this particular evening we joined a few of Mercedes' friends for dinner and a parade/fireworks, which actually took place right in front of the church that their wedding was in. Funny story about the alcohol I'm drinking in the first picture: it's a wine made locally called mistela, we ordered a bottle of it one afternoon with lunch and the waitress sort of looked at us funny. Turns out it's very sweet, almost syrupy, and way more alcoholic than wine. People usually have very small glasses or shots of it. And we drank a whole damn bottle.



2007: Katie was visiting, having come down to get some things taken care of in preparation of her moving down here for school. We spent the day with Alfred's parents and some friends. We got to dress up, have a watermelon seed spitting contest, and take turns trying to hit me, a moving target, with little patriotic footballs. Alfred won the seed spitting contest and was awarded a prize by Max.


Good times. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

busy tracy = late post

Holy hell in a handbasket! Today's been busy. I was at the office for less than half an hour total. We went to the gym this morning, then over to the house where all our fireplace inventory is now stored to meet a guy (who used to be a road manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd) to load up his truck with some stuff from the order last week, then over to the office so Alfred could meet a plumber, then I headed over to the house where all the fireplaces are being installed to go over an installation manual with them, then back to the office to pick up Alfred and head to the house to meet the guy again to pick up another load of stuff, Alfred dropped me off and had to go back to the office for the plumber again, then came back and we waited an hour and 20 minutes (!!) for the guy with the forklift to show up to help us load the pallets. By then I had to go meet someone to show them a rental house and Alfred stayed with the forklift guys, I finished showing the house and went back over to meet Alfred and the forklift guys for lunch, then we finally got back to the office at about 3:30. At which point I had to open mail and do my usual morning duties (and write half of this post). After about 20 minutes we left to go talk to the couple we're house sitting for for a couple days next week, then we came home!

We spent last night at Ilya and Mercedes' house. We watched the video of Ilya sky diving last week. It looked like so much fun. My favorite part of the video was the very end: the camera man films Ilya landing, Ilya turns to the camera and announces "I puked!" as he turns and shows that he did, in fact, puke. Meanwhile the guy who's attached to him (they did tandem) has a disgusted look on his face and is unhooking himself from Ilya as fast as he can. It was hilarious. We spent the night there because we're cat/house sitting for them for a couple weeks while they're visiting Mercedes' family in Spain. Both of these pictures were taken at her parents' house when we were there for their wedding and our honeymoon a few years ago. Their house is built into the side of a hill and has a gorgeous view. The huge rock you can see in the distance of the second picture is on the beach where we actually stayed for the week and a half or so we were on our official honeymoon. We climbed to the top of it. We also went diving at the base of it. It's called Ifach. It's a funny name.