4th of July Fun, House Hunting, and Riley

Go me for finally taking the time to blog. I was waiting until I had pictures to post. Then I realized I still had some 4th of July ones that I never even blogged about! Silly me..

First, I wanted to tell about our fun Fourth of July--

We woke up early and went to the Boy Scouts Pancake Breakfast. It was pretty good-- we had pancakes (obviously), scrambled eggs, and sausage. Unfortunately eggs and sausage aren't really on the Tracy-likes-to-eat list, so I just had pancakes and Freddy got double the eggs and sausage. We're such a good team. :)

Then, we drove up to the high desert to look at some homes. It was two thumbs way down.. Not because there weren't good houses to see, but here's the thing: Monica, my mother-in-law, is our agent. And she has this COOL thing called a SupraKey. (I always thought they were calling it a SuperKey-- but whatever.) So the idea is that you have this little sensor remote thing and all the lock boxes on all the houses sense that you have the remote thing-- then they open up and give you the key-- and you look at the beautiful house. UNLESS. IT. DOESN'T. WORK. Unless the SupraKey is only for a certain area and it keeps telling you "Access Denied" every time you try to use it. And unless 99% of the houses don't even USE the SupraKey boxes, and instead use lock boxes with codes and you don't have ANY of the codes. Like I said-- two thumbs WAY down. We only got to see ONE house (well, at least beyond looking through the windows) and it was TRASHED. And it smelled like they were housing horses and pigs in there. Now, I'm the first person to understand the need to look past minor physical details that can easily be changed. Trust me, I've seen like, every episode of House Hunters on HGTV-- but seriously, this house had me against it right from the moment I found out that it was on Chippendale Circle. It really could have been gorgeous and I still wouldn't have wanted to live there because of the street name alone. But once I saw the inside too, oh man, that was like, strikes 2 through 20. So we drove an hour out there only to be SO frustrated that we couldn't even get into anything. Suuuuper frustrating. (Side note: We went again last weekend and we were (ahem- our agent was) WAYYY more prepared. We saw like 12-15 different houses and had a MUCH better experience.)

After that we went over to the Pardos' house and joined in on their 4th of July party! We had tons of food, lit pretty fireworks in the backyard, enjoyed sparklers, and watched the firework show (usually Walnut HS puts on the firework show, but this summer they're remodeling the whole track and field, so it was from Suzanne Park-- just a block away-- we still had great views from the Pardos' roof).

Riley is so funny!! So first of all, he usually eats just dry food, but occasionally we let him have a mix of wet and dry food. The only problem is that the wet food attracts flies-- LOTS of flies. And Riley gets SO DISTRACTED by them! He'll start eating... and then hear them by him... then he SNAPS and tries to catch them! He'll chase them ALL OVER the back yard until he loses them and comes back to eat his food. Funny!

And the FUNNIEST thing he does.... So Riley has to be an outside dog (lame) because my in laws don't want him in the house. Fine. But he also has to be a chained-up outside dog (super lame) because one time he found one of my step father-in-law's tools on the ground and chewed the cord (duh- pick it up off the ground). (But whatever-- I'm not bitter about it!) Anyway-- he's usually pretty good about having to be put back on his chain when we have to go back inside. Lately he's been playing this game where Freddy will call out, "Riley, chain!" and he'll start walking toward you--but stop about 2 feet past where the chain will reach. He'll sprawl out on the ground and then mayyybe start inching toward you (as long as you still can't reach him). Suuuuper funny!