Fourth of July

We had a way-too-fun Fourth of July. Unfortunately, I took ZERO pictures during the excitement, so you'll just have to trust that I'm not fabricating any of this.

In the morning, we went to the Melbourne town parade- not that exciting, but fortunately quite short. By 11am in July, it's waaaaaaay too hot for crowds of people to be gathered outdoors, so it was perfect. Kids got a few lollipops but were disappointed that there wasn't as much candy as last year. In Natalie's mind, candy being thrown at parades is the very *essence* of America.

We had a few friends over for lunch- families from church and our neighbors with the 6-acre property whose barn is adjacent to the back of our property. We advertised the event as "12-2" but it was a little past 6:30 as we saw the last two families out. I'm happy they were enjoying themselves, but it was a little exhausting and I was eager to clean up. Every room in our house was covered in cookie crumbs and every toy was dumped out and scattered in rooms other than the ones in which they began. If I succeed at ANYHTING as a parent, I want my kids to know how to respectfully behave at other people's houses, including but not limited to making huge messes with food and toys.

We bought some fireworks to do at home instead of facing the traffic after the city fireworks. Our neighbors ended up inviting us over to set ours off together with them. It was very fun! People here looooove their fireworks. As a kid, I remember it being very, very rare to see someone setting off fireworks- even smaller ones- at their homes. Sparklers were as fancy as it got. Here, every few houses someone was setting off fireworks- big ones, not just the ones that shower sparks on the ground. Our neighborhood has thick trees, so we couldn't see everyone else's fireworks very clearly, but we could still see a LOT of colored explosives in the sky! We got home around 11pm and the kids were super exhausted by the end, but it was fun. Very different from what I'm used to. And we only did one of the 2 packs of fireworks that we bought, so maybe we'll save the rest for New Year's Eve! Fireworks were going off all night long, so we slept pretty poorly. I asked Micah this monring, "Weren't you supposed to leave for work an hour ago?" and he said, "It's a new fiscal year. I don't have to go to work."

Aaaaaaaand, in unrelated news, I am SO GLAD that we have this humungous 4-bedroom house just so that our two children can try to claim our bedroom closet as their room.

Took these photos today on my sister's old smartphone that she gave me- don't use it as my phone, but am determined to use it more for photos and apps! Now, if only I could remember to ever charge it. As a spoiled non-smart-phone user, I only charge once a week...

In other news, we're fostering a kitten- started with three, two got adopted and now the lone one is super sad and bored and is kind of an attention hog. Geez, I've already got enough of those under this roof! But he is super sweet, so hopefully he will be adopted soon.