Fourth of July

I think the Fourth of July is becoming one of my favorite holidays. I love fireworks, BBQ, and, of course, celebrating our wonderful country and freedom. Or maybe seeing it through my kids' eyes, I am appreciating things more. Who knows :)

We kept it real simple this year. Eugene has a race ever year, Butte to Butte, so there is no town parade. The closest one we could find was 30 minutes away in a little town called Harrisburg. We got there just in time to see the horses- the boys loved that! I asked Brad to get the camera out, assuming he would either take pictures of our family or give it to me to take the pics. No. This is what I got:

Men. Love them. We were behind the people lining the street, so the boys didn't get to pick up the candy that was thrown out. The people we were by kept giving them what they got. So sweet- I love the people here! 

For dinner, we had homemade burgers and the fixins'. Mmm... so doing homemade burgers from now on! Dessert was a limemade pie. We loved having the pink lemonade pie for Father's Day, we were anxious to try doing a limemade one. Really good, but I think we'll stick with pink next time.

This is the first year we have bought fireworks- isn't that funny?! I find that funny- took us almost 8 years. We're so lame sometimes. James and Gavin really loved the sparklers, though Gavin was kinda going crazy with his. He needed like a 10-foot radius so he didn't get you, I swear. Hence why we held his hand almost the entire time. The neighbor kids saw us doing sparklers and slowly made their way up our driveway. We invited them to have some sparklers, too, and watch our fireworks. It was really great sharing it with more people than just our family. We didn't get very big fireworks... we really didn't know how they would react (scared or excited or both??). Verdict: excited. So much so, they (aka James) wanted to run out to get a closer look. Um, no, dude. Keep back, thanks. 

After our mellow fireworks display, we came inside to get ready for bed. We got a knock on the door and the neighbor kids wanted to invite the boys out to share with their sparklers. So sweet, right?? How could I say no? The boys were so excited to go back out there. James got his lit and, for some reason, kept pointing it down towards the ground. I kept having to have him lift it back up and do fun things. He started scratching at his leg and I didn't get what he was doing. Then he told me it was hurting- apparently, in one of his "down" moments, an ash came off the sparkler and landed in his slipper. He didn't really care about it, then it slowly settled in. So, just like last year, James got burned by a sparkler. I swear... we are good parents! The good part of it was he needed to be cuddled so much and wanted the ice-washcloth on his burn so much, he fell asleep on me. Oh, I miss my little James sleeping on me! I gobbled it up and absolutely loved it. Thankfully, the next morning his burn was doing pretty good. 

Next year, we are planning on keeping the boys up to go to an actual in-the-sky-display. And do our own again. I love the Fourth of July.

Fun note- this post was exactly one year ago. Crazy!