Brian's Bday, July 4th weekend

I swear I already wrote this post, but I can't find it.  Ah well.  Let's start with Brian's birthday.  It was on a Tuesday.  Fun day of the week, no?  So Isabel and Logan decided that he needed to have a soccer birthday party. So I bought a Wilton soccer cake pan and went to work.  It was by far the easiest Wilton cake ever.  It took about 30 minutes from start to finish.  Black and white icing?  Yes please!  Easy peasy.  I made sea scallops with an avacado/wasabi sauce and roasted asparagus to start.  It was amazing.  SO  good.  Took bad diver scallops are so expensive or I would have bought 10 lbs!  But they are expensive, so we had 4 scallops each.  I also made shrimp/tomato risotto.  It was a new recipe.  Not as great as I've had, but still pretty good.  The recipe didn't call for shallots, only a white onion.  So strange.  Shallots are definitely essential to risotto.

The kids had to add sprinkles.

Happy Birthday Brian!

Wednesday Brian's office closed early, so we headed to Houston around 3pm.  We got to Houston and Tank immediately decided he needed to get sick.  He was peeing out of his butt every 20 minutes pretty much the entire 4 days we were there.  I think everyone really thought we were going to have to say goodbye to Tank (he is very very very old), but I took him to the vet on Monday and she gave us an antibiotic and sent us on our way.  The antibiotic is like a miracle pill.  Tank was better the next day.  I've gotten in the habit of letting him out multiple times an hour and yesterday he refused to go out.  He's like "please don't make me go out in 19394 degree weather AGAIN.  I'm fine people."  Yay!

So Thursday we got up and went to the 4th of July parade.  A ton of people and a surprisingly long parade.  It was about an hour and a half long!  I think we all had fun.  Lots of candy thrown out and fans passed around.  After some swimming Lila and crew and another family friend couple came over for some delicious brisket Grandma cooked and other good food.  Yum!  Lila, Jennifer and Greg went swimming with us.  She's practicing for the ProAm surfing competition.  (Is that real?  It sounds legit, right?)

Making pancakes.

Parade fun.

Lunch al fresco

We stayed up late and saw the top half of fireworks.  Pesky new construction got in the way of the view.  The kids didn't seem to care or notice, so it was all good.

Back rub from Grandpa.

Waiting for fireworks.

Friday my Mom and I went to a few stores.  There is a kid's resale shop right by there house that is amazing.  I love going there and finding bargains.  We have the same store in Austin, but it's about a 30 minute drive for me.  The kids tried on their wedding attire that Grandma made.  SO SO cute!  They are all going to look great!

Fargo had a long weekend.  It's tough being so pretty.

Saturday we went to the Dynamos soccer game.  It was a lot of fun and we got a bonus fireworks display after the game!

Sunday we headed back after a little swimming.  It rained on us a little.  Such a nice downpour.  We don't get many of those in Austin.  We had to stop for Tank, but still managed to make it back in 3 hours.  Not bad!

We had a great weekend!

My princesses!

Keeping Tank busy at the Vet's office.