Happy Fourth of July!

We had a great Fourth of July with Pat & Katie, James & Jessie, James' brother Matt, and our favorite neighbors the Richardsons. We started out the day by meeting at the Independence Parade (in Independence, Oregon....what a coincidence!). I took the kids and our decorated red wagon and we walked in the Kids Parade which was a lot of fun. Grace was mesmerized watching people as we walked by and Ethan did his best to eat the wagon decorations (I fished out a shiny red piece at one point). Once we reached the end of the parade route we wound our way back to where the rest of the group was sitting and enjoyed the rest of the parade.



Grace had a grand time running to get the candy tossed out every now and again and ate her fair share. Ethan was happy so long as he had access to his Puffs, and seemed to take it all in with his usual non-chalance. After the parade we headed back to our house and played a little Rock Band and chatted until we went over to the neighbor's patio to eat some delicious food and chat some more. We had quite the tasty spread!



We waited until dusk to start our fireworks and by that time Ethan was asleep in his crib so he missed the fireworks. I don't think he'd like them anyways. Grace liked the snakes and smoke bombs and wasn't too sure about the rest. I did talk her into doing some sparklers with me if I held her and she didn't have to hold one. I told her they were fairy wands and that made her pretty interested! She spent most of the time wrapped up in a blanket on her doggy chair telling us when the fireworks "turned off". By the end of the show she seemed to like them much better.



After our show stopping fireworks display (we drew out some extra spectators!) we headed to the neighbor's back yard where we had everything set up to watch a movie projected onto a king size white sheet. It was pretty amazing! We tested it out the night before and watched Indiana Jones but for the fourth we went patriotic and watched Independence Day. We had a smorgesbord of candy and popcorn and lots of blankets. It sprinkled on us briefly two times and we didn't finish the movie until after midnight, but it was worth it!



Hope everyone else had as nice of a time!