Weekend

4th of July has come and gone, it still blows me away that it is already that time of year again. I still remember the last 4th of July like it was just yesterday - how could an entire year have passed since then? It's amazing how quickly the time goes by, it really does get faster the older you get! Anyhow, we had a great weekend, we spent the day at home, grilling burgers& hotdogs and making a "Red, White & Blue" cake with the kids. Later we met up with some neighbors and took the kids to the Bandemere speedway to watch their fireworks display. We also got to see some rocket powered cars that were about 10x's louder than the fireworks! Have you ever seen a car go 0 to 280mph in a quarter mile? It's pretty amazing. The fireworks were really good, although Kobe fell asleep before they started so he missed them and has been asking everyday since then "When are we going to see the fireworks?" Poor buddy, he was looking forward to them so much.

Saturday the Lam family came up and we grilled chicken and steak out on the grill and sat out on the deck and visited with them. It was really cool to finally meet them in person, they were super nice and I really wish they lived closer because I think they would be the kind of friends we could hang out with all the time.

Sunday we went down to Colorado Springs because my aunt and cousins had all flown there to stay at the Broadmoore (a super nice resort). We hung out with them by the pool and had lunch and then all headed over the Colorado Springs Zoo where the most famous attraction is a treehouse type thing where you can feed and pet the giraffes. It's right at the entrance but the whole zoo is on the mountain so you take a tram ride up to the top and walk down. We got there kind of late and the last tram was coming right then, so we decided to save the giraffes for last after we walked back down the hill. Of course it started raining halfway through the visit so we had to hurry down the hill and missed most of the animals. Then when we got to the bottom to go see the giraffes, we discovered that they had put them all inside and we couldn't pet or feed them! Argh! The kids were not happy with us at all for making them wait till the end of the visit and then not being able to do it all. So I guess we will be making a return trip to the Colorado Springs Zoo in the near future. Next time we go down there we will definitely stay at the Broadmoore and make a weekend out of it because the 2 hour drive each way there and back on the same day with 3 grumpy tired kids sure isn't any fun!

It was great having a 3 day weekend but boy did I pay for it on Monday. Just because I took the weekend off, the customers buying from Hip Monkey didn't. So I had 3 days worth of orders to try and catch up on Monday, on top of the non stop customer service related phone calls I am trying to answer all day. It's just nuts. Even with Annie here to watch the kids, I still couldn't even take a break to eat lunch. I scarfed down a hotdog & potato salad (gotta love 4th of July leftovers!) while muting the phone while a customer told me all about how their seat cover is fraying and they want a replacement....good times. lol Things are definitely picking up with the orders but so are our advertising costs, so even though I'm doing 10x's more work - I'm not sure if we're really making any more profit in the end. I'm so busy trying to keep up with it all, I never have a chance to step back and evaluate it. Kevin is going out of town next week for a business trip so I think I will use that time to pull all of our ads and do some accounting and see if it's all worth it. You don't even want to know how much we have paid year to date for google ads. It's obscene and suddenly I realize exactly WHY google stock is over $500 a share. Wish I would have invested in them a few years ago!

Well I would post pictures but my camera is out in the car, it's raining and I'm too tired to go out there and get it so pictures will be coming soon.