This 4th we spent the holiday in our NEW house in Rock Hall! Over Memorial Day weekend we closed on a house of our own on Bayside Avenue, just a few blocks from The Sharps. Dave spent the first few weekends doing some work on it. The room that’s now Sophie’s needed a lot of work, so Dave spent two full weekends fixing it up, and it turned out really nice. He’ll slowly work his way through the rest of the house pulling up carpets, painting, and generally updating.

My family came up from Virginia and stayed until Monday, so it was a good long weekend.

The first night we walked across the street to the Harbor Shack (yes, we’re across the street from our favorite restaurant!), and while we were waiting for our table got some good family pics.

We spent a lot of time at the beach. The weather was really nice all weekend. The first day we had most of the beach to ourselves, but once the weekend got going it was packed. This is definitely the town if you’re looking for a small town 4th!

Rock Hall celebrates the 4th on the 3rd of July, with a parade in the morning and fireworks that evening. The parade goes down Main Street and is mostly fire trucks, local businesses, and people with cool cars driving down the street throwing candy. Very small and very Americana.

That afternoon the Sharp’s hosted a BBQ at their house. In addition to my family, Zoe and her daughter Maddie, Ed, Dot, Crystal, John and Bella were there too.

After dinner, everyone walked down the street to our house where we set out chairs at the end of the driveway and watched the fireworks, which they shot off right across the street in the harbor.

There was one unfortunate mishap during the weekend. At the BBQ Becky brought her dog Penny and Zoe brought her dog Mo and we had Petunia. They were happy dogs, running around like happy dogs do. I made the unfortunate and mistimed decision to get a picture of Sophie and Maddie on the swing set at the exact moment that Petunia was shooting across the yard. She nailed me with her head right in the knee and I went down. Hard. I’m writing this several days later, after x-rays and a CT scan have confirmed that I have a tibial plateau fracture that will require surgery to fix. Just a moment later, or an inch to one side and it would be a different outcome. But it’s done and there’s nothing I can do now (except curse the damn dog!).

Before hobbling back to a chair I did manage to snap the picture I wanted to get. May it live in infamy!

Before my family left on Monday we had a little July birthday celebration for Mom, Becky and me. It was such a great weekend (with one low point), and I hope we can make it a tradition!