4th of July

Happy 4th of July!  I have always loved the 4th to celebrate everything great about being an American, but 5 years ago this month we moved home from England & can now FULLY appreciate being true blue Americans & loving all of our freedom, choices, & culture.

Here's Whitney ready to go to the parade.

The parade started off with at least 20 fire trucks followed by a million tractors.

I was starting to wonder if they had actual floats when finally this one pulled up... pulled by a tractor!

The kids loved it.  Whitney was permanently pointing at everything that went by.  The parade people must have loved seeing such a little ones out there because they threw LOTS of candy our way.  

Tommy was in heaven.

I was MELTING the entire time & even the kids just sitting there were dripping with sweat.  I looked up the heat later & it was 100 degrees (a record) with a heat index of 118!  

No wonder I was exhausted when I got home!!!

I had little motivation to be too creative this year so I happily made Vic's favorite: fruit pizza.

We went to a friends party & she had these amazing drinks!

Our kids threw water balloons for the first time & loved it.  They went right through the pile in no time!

All the kids had sparklers so I was surprised that Whitney actually wanted one.  As you can see here she just wanted to touch it & blow it out. (both kids are obsessed with blowing out candles)

Fun little star pinata.  Tommy was by far the most aggressive with his wacks. Surprise!

 It was nice that there was a playground right by the fireworks so we played here right up until time for the fireworks to start.  The humidity was up 87% so although it was down to 95 degrees it still felt like way hotter.  Everyone was walking around dripping with sweat... so weird at 10pm!

 I guess people don't like to sit on the sand because once we saw where the fireworks lit off from we walked right down next to the river & sat immediately across from where they set them off with plenty of space everywhere.  It was really nice!  Tommy loved it & Whitney cried at first, but liked it as long as she had a packet of fruit snacks in her hand. (Glad we happened to have the parade treats still with us!)

 We had a few fireworks left over from last year so we let Tommy do those when we got home & he was begging for more so we'll have to grab some more to do later.