3rd of July Fireworks

Eli is doing much better now. His stitches were removed on Friday and he now has two steri-strips continuing to hold his wound together while it heals. He was super excited about "our country's birthday" and we read the Stars and Stripes: The Story of the American Flag book about the American flag every night for a week per Eli's request as we prepared for the big day.

On the third of July, we walked over to Gilson Park to watch Wilmette's fireworks. There are always friends from our ward there, so we found the group and the boys had fun playing with the kids there and being crazy with their light sabers.

Here we are schlepping over with our chairs, blanket, light sabers, food, etc to Gilson Park.....

It's not ideal to start the evening off with a tired, not so happy 2-year-old... Charlie was pretty mellow that night.








Cute Jane excited about her mom blowing bubbles :)


Making an X with the light sabers...



The boys really enjoyed playing before the fireworks... then Eli loved the firework show and Charlie sat on my dad's lap totally freaked out and kept saying, "I don't like it" over and over again. We were pretty close to the fireworks so the booms were really loud. I'm sure he felt like the fireworks were falling on us too, poor guy!

The best part about our kids staying up late to watch the fireworks? The next morning Charlie slept until 9 a.m. and Eli until 9:30 a.m. I was pooped that night and went to bed at a reasonable hour and actually got nine hours of sleep for once! It felt great. More to come from the actual 4th of July.