Fourth of July Festivities

happy {belated} fourth of july!

after taking the last few days (okay, week) off from blogging, i am back!

i can't believe it's july already.

crazy, huh?

this means it's my birthday month!!!

wooo!!

so exciting :)

exactly 19 days until I turn 17 and 21 days until i can drive on my own!

it's been crazy busy around here.

and unfortunately, i didn't get many pictures of all the fun

on friday, the true start of the holiday weekend, my best friend nora had her graduation party!

i made vanilla vanilla cupcakes

{icing and cake from magnolia bakery recipe found here}

they say "congrats class of 2010!"

her party was great, complete with middle eastern food, volleyball, a bonfire, and s'mores!

saturday morning i woke up bright and early for another mile ocean swim.

that night, i celebrated the 3rd of July at a friends beach house.

the 3rd is a huge deal here.

we spent the afternoon kayaking and playing beach volleyball.

he has a roof top porch, so we were able to watch four sets of fireworks from there!

sunday i had to work all day.

it kind of was a bummer working the 4th.

especially since it was 97 degrees and the busiest day of the year.

we had probably 1,000+ people come to our beach.

craziness!

luckily the ocean was flat so no rescues occurred.  we had a few people suffer from heat exhaustion, but they were fine and everything was okay.

that night, i was suppose to go to a beach guard party to watch the fireworks, but that ended up not happening like planned.

so my friend carly and I stayed on the beach eating good food and watching the fireworks go off directly over us!

{picture from july 4th, 2009}

it's kind of a tradition for us to hang out on the 4th.  

we spent the holiday together last year too!

today i worked again.

i was exhausted from the 90+ heat we've had all weekend and from the craziness,

but i'm starting to like my job a lot more now.

i love the people i work with, and i'm basically getting paid to tan and sit on the beach!

not bad!

however, today was even more crazy then yesterday!

we had the same amount of people show up.

some terrible terrible person left their little poodle in the car and it was 95 degrees out!

he only left the window down a crack, so me and another guard had to stick our hands in and unlock the car to give the poor puppy water.

we called animal control and had the cops come out, so i'm very happy the poor dog is safe and sound.

we also had a missing child alert at the same time as the puppy incident.

the child was found safe and sound 20 minutes later at the snack bar, but it was pure craziness.

tomorrow i'm off from work,

but i have swim practice in the morning.

then i have to coach my little kids in swimming.

then i have to teach the disabled children yoga.

and at night the swim kids have their very first swim meet!

i'm excited for them :)

i'm hoping to squeeze in a mani/pedi during the day to

r-e-l-a-x.

how was your 4th?

by the way-

i'm extending the giveaway to this friday since i've been away all week.

go enter to win this gorgeous necklace!!!!

have a good night!

{july 4th, 2009}