our 4th

Happy 4th of July everyone. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves as much as we did. :) Our day started out with a trip to the local playground where they put on a mini festival for the kiddos. There were vendors giving out free lemonade, candy, and ice cream. And there was a big part of the field roped off for various parades. They had the dog parade - where people brought their dogs, a cat parade (there was one poor feline subjected to that) and even a hermit crab parade. Then they had the doll carriage decorations parade where tons of kids walked their doll strollers and favorite dolls decked out in red white and blue. It was cute, really. There was a teddy bear parade and eventually foot races for various age groups. Lots of fun all around. We briefly saw the mayor and met his little girl who is almost 2 - and named Abigail. I think that would be a great best friend for Abs to have, don't you? :)

Abby enjoying her Trader Joe's lemonade.

We spent most of the time at the park sitting and letting Abby just run around. She had a great time going up and down this little hill. And then, she face planted. She tripped going down the hill and landed on a big stick. Poor thing was scared more than anything, but she did come away with some nice scrapes and scratches on her face and arms. :(

Of course, it wasn't too long before she was back to running around and chasing dogs.

After the park, we all (Karen was with us) headed to the grocery store to pick up some grilling foods for lunch. We decided to grill turkey burgers and whole wheat buns. We made some guacamole and bought some potato salad. It was all delicious and definitely made me feel like we celebrated "right" with the grilling and all.

I put Abs down for a late nap, and she slept till 5pm. When she got up, we set out to get some good 4th of July photos. I took tons. Here are a *few* of my favorites.

tickling her with a flower

she's ready to eat it whole I think

learning that she can poke holes in the watermelon

:)

After we were done with pictures (ie: my camera died) we headed inside and kept things low key for a while. We just played, read books, played games and watched firework videos on youtube...in an attempt to introduce her to the concept. Eventually, it was time to head out to the fireworks show. I had decided earlier in the day that we would attempt this trip. We've never kept Abs up that late, and I was sure she'd have a meltdown at some point...but, I also thought she'd enjoy the show, so off we went.

We found parking, found a spot to lay our blanket, and walked around the vendors looking at various crafts and such. We decided that we would spurge on some fair foods for the show. We bought a bowl of fries, fresh squeezed lemonade and Karen bought some fried dough. We made our way back to our blanket and settled in for the show.

Abby loved it of course. It didn't take her very long to catch on to saying "wooooahh!!" after the big fireworks. She said "woah woah woah!" a lot and clapped and grinned. Which was good.

Abby doesn't spend a lot of time outside after dark. She pointed to a star and asked, "a-pane?" And we explained that it was a star - and we sang "twinkle twinkle" Then she seemed to "get it" and started pointing out other stars she could see. At several times during the fireworks show, she would point to the right or left and say "star!" Which was funny to us considering the large exploding bursts of color happening right in front of her.

enjoying the show

Abby didn't fuss during the show or on the way home. She was out like a light about 90 seconds after I put her in her crib. Karen and I stayed up a little longer to watch the Pops firework show....a tradition for me.

We missed having Kyle around, but he's having a good time in Dallas and the NFB conference and he'll be back soon. We made the best of the day I think. So, happy 4th America.