This year we celebrated for four days. We had five children at our home, and had 3 additional family members visit for two days. LOTS of fireworks, food, family, a parade, and fun.

Kaylee (and us) very much enjoyed having her cousins stay with us for five days while their parents were out of town. Jerris, Jill and Elizabeth came down to do fire works with us. They dropped the Wii and a huge box of fire works off on their way to pick up more fire works. So the children got to pick out some early fire works to set off.

We did our main celebrating on the 3rd. Jerris and Jill supplied all the yummy food. THANKS! We attempted homemade root beer (tasted like pepto), and made homemade ice cream. I stole a very small bite of the ice cream. It wasn’t enough of a bite to tell if I liked the ice cream, but I didn’t dare try a bigger bite. I am told that the ice cream was delish.

The children had fun running around bare foot. While playing with sparklers…… It led to this.

YUP. We made all the children put on shoes after Kaylee burned her foot stepping on hot ash. And yes we herd about our brilliance from her Yaiyai. I did think to myself that the children should be in shoes, but in all the crazy fun it was a fleeting thought. Live and learn right? The burns are healing up nicely.

Our nieces and nephew wanted to go the the parade. So we (Jon and I) sucked it up and woke up early to get them there. Our extras woke up WAY earlier than ours do so it was an adjustment for the days they were with us.

In fact Kaylee was woken up minuets before we loaded into the cars. She ate her breakfast in the car. It was a yummy Nutella and Almond butter sandwich on whole wheat. She got it all over her face. The children enjoyed running after showers of candy and eating cookies. Jon and I have declared that we are not parade people.

Mister Man had fun. He played with toys in the shade and comfort of his car seat, then when it was nap time sat on my lap in the shade of my umbrella and passed out to the lovely noise of everyone enjoying themselves.

After the parade Jon mowed the lawn and then Kaylee and Sarah ran through the sprinklers. It was Kaylee’s first time so I joined them to get her going and to show her it was o.k. The slides got nice and wet and the girls had much fun going down them.

Jon had multiple children on him any time he sat for longer than a minute. He had 4 0f the 5 sitting on him at the same time more than once. The children LOVE him.

The last day the children were with us, I declared it a princess day. So we wore princess nightgowns, had hair done to look like a crown, watched princess movies, and had milk and cookies for snack (un-herd of in my house). We all very much enjoyed our little house guests. Come again any time!