After all the excitement last week, the 4th of July seemed rather mellow, even if we had an extra 5 kids with us for the day! The Wood's kids spent the night on the 3rd and woke up to Joe's famous pancakes. This is the one reliable thing that the Wood's ask about as soon as they get to our house for a sleepover.... "Are we having pancakes in the morning?" I think that there might be mutiny if we ever offered something else! It is so cute how excited they are about pancakes. And so, of course, we did in fact have pancakes! Joe got out the griddle and started flipping, and I went out into the garden and picked a bowl full of fresh strawberries. Yum!
As soon as breakfast was over there was a flurry of activity, getting 9 kids dressed, bikes and scooters decorated, and out the door to our neighborhood bike parade. No small feat, I'll have you know!
They had a fire engine lead the way, along with a good portion of the local fire fighters. Which, of course, it completely awesome for a bunch of boys.
The parade went from our pool, around in our neighborhood, past our house (you can see the top of it peeking up above the fire truck)
Some of the boys behind the fire truck: Michael is in the black shirt and red streamer on his helmet, Levi, Ansel and a bit of Calder are the three on the right in white shirts and red streamers in their wheels.
At the end the firemen gave out popsicles (this is when we had the conversation with the firemen who had saved Calder from himself and the epi-pen)
Calder and his buddies since kindergarten:
And the walk home:
The rest of the day went as follows: Home, put all 9 kids to work cleaning up their messes, get all nine kids in swimsuits and sunscreen and equipped with towels and goggles, and off with Joe to the pool. Meanwhile, I scrambled to get the house ready for a BBQ.
Our friends, the Hunsakers, came over and brought their BBQ grill (since we still don't own one) and we grilled amazing burgers and shish-kabobs, ate corn on the cob, watermelon and baked beans. It was great! Aimee and Allen came on over during that time, taking a break from their long day of packing.
The best thing at the BBQ, was the homemade waffle cones! Shona brought over her waffle cone maker, and we broke it in, since she hadn't used it before. They were so fabulous!
Especially with Tillamook ice cream inside!
We set up our bounce house outside, for the first time since we moved here (going on 6 years now), until now it had a permanent home upstair in our bonus room. You can see said bounce house through the kitchen window, behind Aimee enjoying her waffle cone:
KK and Claire are BFFs. They are in sunbeams together and are two peas in a pod. I need to secretly videotape their conversations sometime because they are so hilarious!
I loved having the hanging lanterns hung in the backyard, it was so fun and festive.
Shona and Joe on dessert duty:
After dinner, we started to set up for fireworks. Kaelan couldn't wait, he just sat in that chair patiently, while we got everything ready:
Aren't they so cute together? They "love" each other. Kaelan is always telling me that he loves Claire, and Claire is always telling Shone she loves KK. They have the best time playing.
Smoke bombs:
The kids liked the colors, but strongly disliked the smells
I love this pic:
Fascinated by the show, not a fan of the noise
FYI, Ansel had worn this outfit everyday since the fourth, even to bed...It is summertime, I guess I shouldn't push to hard...maybe it will just disintegrate?
Goodbye hugs, Claire has an early bedtime:
I found these awesome glow-in-the-dark swords which were a big hit with ALL the kids.
Sparkler fun:
The three musketeers (aka troublemakers)
Levi, drawing his name with his sparkler:
The camera captured the "L"
It was such a great 4th! Crazy, but fun and very memorable. It is so nice to have friends and family to celebrate with!
No comments:
Post a Comment