a drive on the 4th

A very very very small segment of the population here is interested in celebrating the 4th of July.

Obviously.

But for those of us who do love a little red white and blue there's nothing like a pool party.  Unfortunately I didn't take a camera (or even a phone) into the splash park, but I did get a few pictures on the way there.  So basically you get photos of our Independence Day drive.

The splash park is actually fairly conveniently located.  It's all relative when you have umpteen million neighbors, right?  But driving has been near the top of my list of "hard things to re-adjust to"...... It's not so much the quantity of cars as it is the crazy-factor.  I just can't take all the craziness, the never know what to expect from who stuff going on out there.  It'll come, I know.

This time Matt took a half day off work and I was riding shotgun, with plenty of photo ops.  Here we are loaded up - our van seats three in the middle row, two in the back.  It's a fair bit smaller than our America van but we love this vehicle.  Oh the freedom it provides!

Our city is circled by numerous ring/loop roads with other major arteries lined up like hands on a clock.  Here we are headed into the city (we live right inside the third ring road).   Lots of buses and the pedestrian sky-bridges are everywhere.

Time to turn east.... this scene is very common - through traffic remains on the high road, turning traffic stays down on ground level.

Hello high-rises.  And that grey sky is a downer.  Ugh.  Another not-so-fun thing to get used to.

On the way home we hit big traffic.  Big big Friday rush hour traffic.  So we aborted our original dinner plans and stopped on the side of the road for some dumplings.  My kids had been begging for dumplings since last week and when we spotted a road-side restaurant we couldn't resist.

I scrambled out of the car, clarified with the cook that they did indeed have dumplings, invited our friends (in the car behind us) and then ran back to Matt hollering "find a place to park" all while the light was still red.

I'm pretty high-challenge, high-adventure.  One of the reasons life here is a good fit for me ;)

Traffic was still full on the post-dinner drive home, but I think our dinner stop helped us skip over the worst of it :)  And while Chinese dumplings are hardly your standard 4th of July fare, it sure worked for our family.  I've got bbq on the menu for tomorrow, so it'll all work out in the long run!