For a majority of my young life, my family has gone down to my aunt's house to celebrate the 4th of July. But in recent years, for whatever reason, we haven't been doing it. Since I'm moving on Saturday and my parents are potentially moving before the next 4th of July, I was glad my mother decided we should go down this year. It was just me and her that went down with my father meeting us for a while after he got done work, but it was nice regardless. My two cousins both have kids now. My eldest cousin had quite a little brood between his own kids, step kids, and friends of kids so the pool was pretty full and there was a lot of madness going on. Definitely got me thinking about the dumb stuff that we used to do when we were little. Also got me wondering if you could still go through the little secret passage from the backyard to the front through the crack between the buildings. I didn't check though. I'm just that lazy. After dinner was made and eaten, my mom and I took a walk down by the ocean. It was SO pretty! I took a zillion photos! That may be a slight exaggeration. But, really, I could have. I love clouds and I love colors and it was just so, so beautiful. These pictures do not do it justice! 
Eventually the sun went all the way down and we made our way back to the house to prepare ourselves for the fireworks display. It was a pretty good show. It was long! Way longer than usual! It was sweet! If that's the last 4th of July fireworks display I bare witness to in Wildwood (I doubt it will be) I'm glad it was that one. It was sweet. Thanks Coca-Cola!
Once upon a time, the Panera Bread establishment had a sweet deal. If you came in and spent over $10, you would receive a free ticket to the Philadelphia Zoo. My mama didn't raise no fool so we got ourselves to Panera Bread and had a lovely meal. This marketing ploy was absolutely win-win. I love their food and I love the zoo! And the Philadelphia Zoo is not a cheap ticket. It's $18 rather than the $10 I spent and I wouldn't have gotten a delicious meal at Panera bread to boot! So, we've had the tickets for a few months now and have been holding off on using them. I love the zoo, but I'd prefer to go when it isn't massively crowded. With orientation coming up on Friday and classes starting next week, the window of opportunity was closing in so luckily we were able to go! It was pretty much the perfect day for it; a sunny, crisp autumn day. I borrowed my mother's amazing camera and got a lot of great pictures. I go to so many shows where you're not allowed to have cameras I actually felt like they might tell me I can't bring my camera into the zoo. But yeah, it was really nice. I wish I could go to zoos like that more often. Maybe when I live in Philly I'll go more often. Not that I'll have any money. I'll have to work out a way to break in. Come to think of it, I never even went to our sad little Bridgeton Zoo this year. Damn, I need to get with the program.
I may or may not have mentioned in previous posts about the fantastic camera my father made the executive family decision to buy with my mother's money before their trip to California earlier this year. Despite the large financial weight a camera like this cost us, it's a great camera and when they move to California, I think I'm going to hide it from them. The really cool thing about this camera is my mother can use her lenses from her old film camera. So, she put this big sick lens on with the intent of trying to snag some close up shots of birds, and I did just that. But not some wussy bird feeder shot! Hell to the naw! Way up in a tree! Sick! I'm going to have to hide this lens too!
