Happy 4th of July!

Happy belated 4th! Hope everyone had a safe holiday! I'm sure most of you had just of busy a day as we did. It started with the annual parade and festivities in Towanda. They are one of the only towns around that have a 4th of July parade so it's usually pretty decent and has a good turn out. Ainsley stayed her usual mellow self. She mostly wanted to run around in the park in between all of the sale booths. Kaylee was a little shy at first but in no time got into getting all of the candy. We saw a couple people we knew in the parade and scored hand-fulls of candy from them. An added benefit to a small town parade.





After the parade we hung out in the park for a bit and got some lunch and then it was home for naps. After naps we went up to my Dad and Sallie's for Skyeler's 7th and Koen's 5th birthday parties. The girls had lots of fun swimming and playing on the swingset.


We had decided to actually attempt fireworks this year. Yes I know I'm a terrible parent as I've never let my children go to fireworks before. This was really the first year I thought it would be worth it with Kaylee, and Ainsley is pretty mellow so I knew the change in routine wouldn't throw her. Kaylee's pretty routine oriented and until recently sometimes would have difficulties in the change. So I really thought it not worth fighting that battle the last couple of years when she was really too little to know she was missing something. We had talked about taking our boat out on the lake and watching them, but not having done it before we didn't know how the girls would react and didn't want to be stuck out there. So we stopped at Lake Bloomington on the way home and sat on a sleeping bag. Kaylee loved the fireworks and after each one would yell "SCORE" and throw her arm up as to give a big thumbs-up, and often a high-five to Daddy. A little over half way through Kaylee laid down and soon after said she was ready to go. So we left and it worked out well because we weren't stuck trying to leave with all of the other cars. Overall it was a fun, and busy, day and the girls really did a great job!

Here we are at the fireworks. The girls are more focused on the fireworks, which is the direction they are both looking.