Parade Fun

There's nothing like a little hometown parade to take care of the summertime blues.

Our town has two parades in one weekend for its little celebration. We had such a hot, sweaty good time at the first one that we decided to go to the second one, too.

The parade started off with firetrucks blaring their sirens and horns. Just a little too loud for my kiddos.


There weren't a lot of "floats," in the traditional sense...



...but we had all kinds of fun teaching Brooke to dodge in and out of traffic to grab candy in the street. She scored loads of jewelry. Atta girl.




Scot promised he would do whatever it takes to get to ride a little go-cart in the parade one day, complete with little hat.


Is it bad to give a one-year-old a sucker? Two suckers? Two suckers and a popsicle? Oops.


Soon, our work was done.


So we took our sweaty kids back home.

4th of July

There are some holidays that don't stick in my head from year to year. The 4th is one of them. I mean, I can remember a few things about last year. I was really (REALLY) pregnant. We watched the fireworks from our deck. Brooke, not yet 2, paid absolutely no attention and I spent most of the night waddling around after her. But that's pretty much all I remember. And I don't think I took any pictures. (Gasp!)

I'm writing this one down. That's what this blog is about, right??

So this year, Scot's parents came up and we started the day at church. We sang some old, patriotic hymns--some of my favorites.

After church, naps, etc., Grandma and Brooke made homemade ice cream. I don't think I've had it before, but it is GOOD! Definitely a fan. Brooke was just thrilled to crack eight eggs at once and lick the paddle.



Then outside. Popper-thingies and glow bracelets...


...and trains??

Uh...where's Nate??


Then a little BBQ with burgers, beans, corn on the cob and chips. Nate did this to his hair entirely by himself.


Hi. I smell like baked beans.

After dinner, Brooke's buddy came by and they were seriously pumped for the fireworks. We have a great view of the town fireworks right in our backyard. They ran around yelling "I'm so excited!"

They are about to burst!

Of course, once the fireworks started they didn't watch. See, we have such a good view of the fireworks that the entire neighborhood shows up in our yard to watch. Little Miss would rather chat up the new people than watch fireworks. I couldn't see her because it was dark, but I could see the blur of her glow bracelets as she fluttered around chattering nonstop.



Brooke got to stay up until 10:30. (We paid for that one the next day.) A snuggle with Papa and off to bed.


We won't forget this one. :-)

Simple Stuff

Things have slowed down this week.

No vacations.
No holidays.
No anything out of the ordinary.

We've settled back into our day to day. Fine by me.