Happy 4th of July!

We had so much fun this 4th!  We invited 4 families to come have a picnic with us.  Three ended up coming, including Brandon's friends from California who have just moved here and some of the first people we met when we moved here.  The family who couldn't make it totally gets a pass since the Mama is due for a C-section this coming Monday!  If you're interested, I posted lots and lots of pictures of our dinner on my food blog and a bunch of recipes, too!

Didn't Brandon do a fantastic job setting everything up?!  It was a huge help.  (I was inside frying chicken...)

 We had rocket balloons for the kids as well as bubbles, pinwheels, water guns, a wading pool, bike riding, some fireworks, and we topped it all off with a diet coke and mentos demonstration.  Professor Reid is demonstrating how to inflate a balloon rocket.

 Cade borrowed his buddy's bike, still decorated from the parade.

Helping load the table.

 L'il Miss Sweetie.

 Bobo the Fett.  (He's all about the 4th of July!)

Priming the chow plopper...

 Fillin' up.

Precious profile.

Taylor.  She stopped us all in the middle of dinner saying, "I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT!!  MY DADDY PLAYED A DOOR!"  She was only mildly amused when I asked her if he played it with drumsticks...

Life is like a bowl of... well... you know...

This isn't the best pic, but Cade had his helmet on in the rest of the pictures.  See his snazzy new hair?

If Reid could eat a hot dog for every meal of every day for the rest of his life, he'd be one happy kid.

Bronte playing her melonmonica.

Darling Kate.

Running off the pecan pie after dinner.

The great race.

Anything you can do I can do better!

Commensin' to begin the fireworks.

Maybe should have taken a hint about the quality of this display by reading the box... it was supposed to spin around and build a building in the end.  Our driveway wouldn't allow the platform to spin properly, so as the cracker went off, it would make a loud *POP!* spin half way around and sit there till the next cracker went off.  It went *POP!* wait... *POP!* wait... *POP!* wait... *POP!* wait... then it sat there for about 30 seconds, no building at all, till suddenly it went *flump!* popped up a little 6 inch building like a droopy jack-in-the box and promptly caught fire and burned to the ground.  All the adults were laughing their fool heads off and I was trying, between fits of giggling, to get Brandon's attention to get some kind of water on it, when Reid emerged from the bushes spraying the thing with a water hose!  He had the look on his face of a true and dedicated fireman.  When I told him to turn it off, he did with a sort of "Nothing to See Here, Folks!  No Need to Thank Me, Ma'am..." attitude and went back to enjoying the show.  Our hero!

...And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there...  Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

Yes.  Yes it does.

Hope your Fourth of July was as fun as ours was.  And if it wasn't, come on out here next year!   We have pie!