Our Birthday Party for America
We SO look forward to the Fourth of July every year! This year, as always, we went to my aunt and uncle's house to BBQ, play, and light fireworks. This year, we brought along some friends of ours, our awesome neighbors. :)
We visited and played bananagrams (I lost miserably the first game, but kicked butt the second game. lol) while we waited for dinner. Uncle Matthew BBQed and everyone brought sides and salads. Everything was SO GOOD!!!
After dinner, we headed up the hill to a park, bringing along the wading pool full of water balloons. :D Matthew tried to lay out the ground rules, silly enough to believe we'd actually follow them, and then the fun began! We played Water Balloon Freeze Tag until we were out of water balloons. We actually did kind of stick to the main rules of the game... for the most part. lol It was a lot of fun! And since it was 90 degrees, the water fight was refreshing! :)
Usually, I watch Rori and take pics while everyone plays, but this time I decided to get in on the fun and I left my camera in the hands of my friend, Susan. She mostly took video of the fight, which I'm sure is going to be embarrassing to watch seeing as how I became a huge target for some reason and kept getting pelted with water balloons, but she did get a few pics:
We had some time between the water balloon fight and fireworks, so we visited and played more bananagrams.
And finally it was dark! And that can mean only one thing... FIREWORKS!!!
Rori is frightened by the fireworks, so we had ear muffs for her and let her snuggle under a blanket. She started out sitting with Emma, but after I took a few pics, she ended up on my lap and fell asleep. She slept through all of the fireworks! Except for the one time when a couple of the tubes exploded on the ground, everyone jumped, some of the girls screamed... yeah, that did wake her up for a few minutes, but then she fell back to sleep and slept until it was over. lol
While my normally sane and sound husband transformed into his annual pyro self, Stan helped the kids light sparklers and roman candles. It's fun to take pics of the kids with sparklers, you get th neatest pics:
Ryan let Cadi light off a few of the fireworks this year. It was hilarious because after she lit her first mortars, she yelled, "I feel like a Roser!" It had us all laughing!!! I didn't get a pic of her lighting the fireworks, but I did get this pic of her and Jessica helping Ryan load the next round of mortars.
I tried to take a candid pic of the group watching fireworks, but it turned out blurry. :(
I love my camera! These were pics taken with my camera; I took some, and Emma took some (She loves my camera, too! lol):
The finale finished up around 11:45pm. About that time, we realized that we never ate the cheesecake Ryan had made. So we started what may become a new tradition: Midnight Cheesecake. lol After the cheesecake, cleaning up, and saying goodbyes, we finally got home around 1am.
It was such a fun night, probably one of the best Fourth of Julys we've had! And I am already looking forward to next year's! :)