Ahhh, sparklers! Yes they had parental supervision. No, noone got hurt.
Tossing poppers in the street. They brought back fond childhood memories of my little brothers and those things.
Look how patiently they are all waiting for someone to give them some fire to play with!
Why is it that when we were kids no one was concerned about our safety with these? I remember running all over the back yard with them. Dax thought these were pretty cool. We're gonna hope it doesn't wake up some inner pyromanic.
A certain big brother snuck off and lit all the smoke bombs (this was a legitimate big brother, not Dax). The little ones were quiet upset they didn't get to take part but they all aggreed the colored smoke was cool.
Hey, new location, more of these crazy firesticks!
Even though the sound of fireworks terrified Dax last night, seeing them tonight he seemed to be ok, although he needed "my Lil" to be safe. I love how there are those moments where they just love each other!
This was how Finn looked when the fireworks began.
This was how Finn looked when the fireworks were over. Why is it his brother or sister whispering can wake him at home but a half hour of fireworks ending with a 5 minute series of booms followed by many thousands of people laughing, talking, clapping, yelling, and honking did not budge him?
Praises...Good Day. Good friends.
Being free. I think we get so worked up with the fireworks and the picnicking (or pizzaing, as the case may be) of the day that sometimes we forget what it all means. We are blessed to live where we do, even in the midst of chaos like times now, we are still very blessed to be in the United States. There are some amazing people putting their lives on hold somewhere far away to make sure it's safe for us to sit at a park, by a river, in a parking lot, or in our own backyard and watch the sky fill with amazing lights and sounds. Because of them we have these days to just play with friends.
Girl Days! Lily and I haven't had one for a while, but today we took some time out and saw a movie and went to lunch, just the girls. This is one of those things that we used to do often before the boys joined our family. We don't do it nearly enough anymore. Today we saw, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl . I am telling you this because it was a great movie! If you have girls in the 6 to 12 age bracket it is really worth seeing. Honestly, even if you don't you might enjoy it. I teared up many times. Seeing people's lives affected by the depression really touched me. I think this may be in part because it would be so easy the way things are going at the moment to reach that again. It illustrated just how fast you could go from having everything to losing everything and how the kindness of strangers and the attitude you carry can get you through. It helped that it had a great, very familiar cast. My only complaint would be that it's supposed to take place in Cincinnati but it was filmed in Canada. I wasn't sure when watching it though, the houses looked very much like the houses in Mt. Adams (the burb it was set in). Lily and I did get a little thrill when they showed a big map of Ohio and one of the arrows on the map was pointing at Wilmington.
