July 4th Weekend

July 4th has always been one of my favorite holidays! I think it has something to do with always going up to Pennsylvania and spending the long weekend with family at our camp house.  Although that tradition has slowly faded over the years with everyone going their separate ways, I still have a great love for the holiday.  I came down on Tuesday to NC and surprised D.J. at the field a day early and was able to stay from Tuesday night till Sunday after the game.  Stryker came down for the trip this time too and he did so well in the apartment while I was at the ball park.  I was a little worried about the time he would be in the room, but I guess he is getting out of his puppy stage! 

D.J. was originally supposed to play in the game on July 3rd, but just when my parents started to get on the road to head down for the game, he got changed to July 4th! It was a good thing that he ended up not playing on Thursday because Hurricane Arthur was giving us a little of his rainy outskirts.  It was down pouring and they continued to play! D.J.'s mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law and nephew came down from Thursday to Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, every game lasted over 3 hours so it was hard to get food after the game.  On July 4th, my parents drove down for the game with my sister and grandmother.  It was great to have the whole family together (minus my brother) to see D.J. play in front of a 9,000 person crowd! It was the first time they played D.J.'s walkout song too! Getting to the game was another story though.. I have never seen that many people getting off the interstate for the Mudcats game.  It was NUTS!!! I could only imagine if those people would actually come to more games throughout the season.

He had a great game and afterward we snapped some photos before my family got on the road.  We got out of the parking lot before the fireworks started to miss the traffic! IT WAS CRAZY!! I have never seen that many people pulled over on the side of the road to watch fireworks. 

Since the only thing that was open was Buffalo Wild Wings, that was what we got for dinner with the family! We ended up getting home around 1 a.m. and went straight to bed.

Saturday morning, D.J. and I woke up and did a little exploring around Raleigh.  We grabbed breakfast at The Flying Biscuit and then drove downtown and walked around for a little bit.  We were super touristy, but that's exactly what I wanted to do! 

Downtown Raleigh is so beautiful.  They have lots of historical buildings and it was super clean! Everything was decked out in American Flags! 

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday weekend and gave a big shout out to America on it's birthday!!