A Very Late 4th Update & 3 Years o'Awesomeness together

Well, it has been a while but I will try and update our lives for the past month.  

First, we had the 4th of July!  We had a couple days o' fun including Fanfare & Fireworks on the 3rd with live Gainesville Band/Orchestra music while the fireworks were going off (think Sandlot) and on the morning of the 4th we had our ward breakfast & games and then had our own version of the Cul-de-sac of fire.

We borrowed a house just off a little lake that had a huge backyard and invited some friends from the ward to party with us.  After some good food & games, we went and did our own little fireworks show which was followed by the neighbors full on huge firework show (big fireworks are not illegal in Florida and they sell them year round).  It was a great 4th as usual.

Oh, and Mike was in charge of the camera so it was a bit sparse.

leisurely enjoying post-dinner activities in the huge backyard

Sitting on a great southern porch in rockers.

The little girls this year loved sparklers a used the bug-repellant candle to light them all night.

This picture is here because while we were watching the neighbors fireworks from the backyard by the lake, we heard some gator calls, but could not see any so we took a picture to make sure that they were not right next to us by looking for their eyes flashing. 

It was also our 3 year anniversary this week so last week we went down to Busch gardens and played there for the day and then went to the Tampa Bay Rays game against the Toronto Bluejays.  It was a good game but what was awesome was that it was 90's night and after the game, MC HAMMER did a concert.  By that time it was getting late so we only stayed for 3 songs to get home by 1am.  All of the songs he did at the beginning were his new stuff, (yes, he has new stuff) but our friends who stayed said that at the end he did some "Can't touch this" and other Hammer classics.  It was a fun and tiring day.  

I am so grateful for my hubby who is my best friend and who I could not picture my life without.  This has been an awesome 3 years and I am so excited to spend the rest of eternity with him. Thanks babe for all that you do and for supporting me at all times.  I love you!

Hello? Is anyone out there? I know that some people seem to peruse these posts with some regularity, so there must be an audience. Therefore, I have decided that it is about time that I made some sort of contribution to this collaborative effort. After all, I am the andmike part of rachandmike. So welcome to my very first blog post, depending on how it goes it might end up being my last one. (I could leave the blogging to the family expert, I love you Rach) So now that I have decided to try my hand at this whole bloggint thing I have to figure out what topic I feel so passionately about that I could write anything of any meaning. After pondering that for some time I realized that blogging isn't about things of deep meaning. (take a look at all the previous posts if you doubt me) In essence Rachel only seems to write about what we do in our boring everyday lives. So I decided to write about one of my new favorite things that I have discovered on the internet. (it is amazing how much there is to look through when you are at work but really have little to nothing to do) So my great discovery is the website http://www.pandora.com/ Now as everone is very aware, I am not the musical on in our house hold, but I think I have stumbled across something that all you music lovers will enjoy. (or maybe I am behind the times and everyone has already discovered this site before I did, in that case kuodos to you) You can enter a song or group that you like and the site will play other songs that have similar music qualities to the songs you like. It is pretty cool I think. Thanks for reading through my ramblings. I hope it brought you some form of enjoyment.