At home for the 4th

One of the staples of my blog is the fact that I draft them the day before. I do this for a few reasons: 1. It helps me prevent (at least a little) from procrastinating 2. It gives me a day to step away from my work before publishing it and 3. It allows me to proofread one last time before sending it out into the social media world. It has a few drawbacks, the main one being when I draft for things that haven't actually happened yet. This week, I drafted my blog Wednesday on coming to the lake for the 4th of July. I did do that, I'm currently at the lake as I type this, but at the time of writing I thought a good bit of my extended family would be here too this evening. (I have no idea why I thought that, nobody told me that, I just made it up.) So since tonight was a nice quiet night spent with my parents and dogs, I decided to scrap the original one and go off the cuff — so my apologies for any typos that didn't have the one-day-proofread benefit.

This time last year, I was in Harrisonburg for the 4th. I had just gotten a lime tattoo on my ankle, shared with my beloved friend Taylor, and it was still healing. This prevented me from doing a good deal of things. I was able to go to a gigantic collective yard sale (maybe it was a flea market? Still not quite sure, one year later) with Ben in his hometown, then later that evening I joined up with Ben + friends for some hard ciders and firework-viewing. But in between that, I largely stayed at home. I couldn't go in the water with my new tattoo, and it wasn't a great idea to be outside sweating in the heat with it either, so I spent most of the day indoors with Tucker — who, by the way, is terrified of fireworks.

This year, I'm so fortunate to have the day off. Having holidays off is absolutely not a given when you work in news. In fact, of my many friends both from college and from the workplace that are in the industry, the vast majority worked today. So since I was lucky and had today and tomorrow off, I got up this morning and drove to Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia to join my family for the 4th. Today, it was me and my parents holding down the fort. Friday, my aunt and uncle will arrive in the afternoon and my sister, her husband and their kids will arrive at night. I'm thankful I get to see them, even if it's for a day. Saturday more family will arrive, and we'll actually be celebrating my sweet niece Charlotte's first birthday, but I'll have to leave Saturday morning to head back to Charlotte.

Obviously I wish I could be here the whole weekend and see more of my family for longer, but I'm so dang thankful to be here at all. So many people don't have the ability to see their families, on holidays or any other days. I'm thankful to have a safe place to visit and a family that is able to welcome me home with open arms and a cup of coffee.