4th of July

The 4th of July is one of my most favorite holidays! I just adore it, and the sweet traditions it holds in my heart. So you know I had a jam packed day scheduled for us on the 4th!

First we had to get properly dressed to celebrate. Now I am not on that makes my kids special outfits for this day, but I do try to make sure they are in red, white and blue. And I love to do the girls hair cute. This year Audrey is working on growing her hair out, so I couldn't do the star braid that I wanted to try so badly, but I did do this cute ribbon weaved headband look on her, and she has cute 4thish hair clips too. This is becoming one of my favorite things to do to her hair right now, because I can't stand it in her eyes and this keeps it completely away from her eyes!

After we got all ready, we hit the road and headed to my grandparent's house in the valley. Part of the 4th of July to me is setting off your own fireworks, which we can't do here on the coast (totally does not make sense to me that here, where there is tons of water, we can't set of our own, but there, where it is dry and barren, you can... but hey, I don't make the rules!)

It was pretty danged HOT when we got there (anything over 85 is hot to me, but we were in triple digits there, so it was danged hot!) so we played in the house for a while to stay cool.

My grandparents love to play games together. They always have Yahtzee and Cribbage out. GGpapa and I sat down to play Yahtzee with the kids. Love getting their math lessons in, and some great reasoning skills too while they think that they are playing a game!

We played teams, girls against boys. Audrey and I were in TONS of trouble for beating the boys.

We had some yummy dinner, took at little rest, then headed up the hill to watch FIREWORKS!!!!!

I LOVE fireworks, but I don't like crowds, so we always go up the hill and sit in the back end of the truck and watch them in the peace. I LOVE it. It is a special time for me.

While we were waiting for it to get dark I played with taking pictures of the kids.

Audrey loves to pose for pictures...

Nat, not so much. But I thought that this one came out well.

Watching the sun go down, down, down until it was finally time for the city show!!

It's hard to take pictures of the city fireworks.... so I didn't take many!

After these are all done we head back down the hill and set off fireworks on the street.

This is my absolute favorite part!!

I love looking down the street and seeing all the neighbors out having fun and doing the same thing.

It makes me feel like part of the community, even if I don't know most of the people on their street anymore. But I really love the sense of community

Plus the fireworks are just so darned pretty!

We didn't do tons this year, but we did lots of pretty fountain ones.

Another year of memories.

What is your favorite 4th of July tradition or memory?