4th of July

I know this is weeks after the holiday, but I figure better late than never :) I have so many catch-up posts left but I’m working my way backwards. We did most of our celebrating on the 3rd of July, when we kept the boys up waaaaaaaay too late and watched fireworks by the lake. It took them multiple days to get back on a decent sleep schedule.

Before the fireworks began, we watched some entertainment around the park and bought these overpriced light sabers for the boys. The park was packed with families and I think it’s safe to say, pretty much every little boy had one of these. My justification was that at least they were battery-operated, so they would last longer than the glow sticks, which were also overpriced. Ben kept mumbling that he couldn’t believe we were “one of those parents.” He originally just wanted to buy one, but there was no way these kids were sharing one light saber…

Amazingly, we were able to meet up with other people from church (the park was sooooooooo crowded) and Eli was excited to see his favorite teenage friends (and Jack, who is older than Eli by a few years).

And the Perry’s with their cute Hannah, who is in between Eli and Charlie in age -

Here are my very average pictures of the fireworks, which were great -

Eli was hilarious. He LOVED the fireworks and would not stop talking through the show. He was loud too. The best was when he called out, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” for no real reason :) He was so so excited about each boom and kept yelling, “BOOM!” BOOM!” and jumping around. Charlie somehow stayed awake until the fireworks began at 9:30 and was pretty captivated by the loud booms and bright lights.

On the 4th of July, we caught the end of our city’s annual parade that goes by a friend’s house. It was cute to see the kids sitting on the steps watching the floats go by.

Of course the girls are smiling and the boys aren’t paying attention to me :) (We had Davey with us that weekend – you can see him sitting behind the kids, watching the parade). About an hour after this, Eli was burning hot so we took him home (I initially thought he had heat exhaustion because it was a really hot and humid day). He had a fever of 104 that night and then a fever for the next few days, poor guy. It never turned into anything else, just a really awful fever. Charlie had a fever a few days before that, so we figured maybe it was the same random virus. Thankfully my kids are healthy again!