4th of July

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. Our family kept busy over the days preceding the holiday and today. We lit off fireworks from our house on Saturday night. The kids had so much fun. At one point, I heard Dalton say, "this is the best night ever!". I love hearing stuff like that come from their mouths.

Jayden initially had fun with the snaps that pop. He threw them down in the driveway. He even got to the point where he held a sparkler. Shortly after he got scared and I took it from him. It was a hot and humid evening and we thought Jayden was sweating so bad his shirt was getting wet. Then we realized he had had an accident!

Devin absolutely loved the smoke balls. She danced in the radiant colors and squealed in delight. Some of the fireworks the boys lit off were loud and she covered her ears.
Joseph was more into trying to blow things up or starting them on fire. He piled all the old used up fireworks in one spot and then would put another new one on top and light it. Of course we didn't have any "big" fireworks because we kept it simple and as safe as possible. After a few attempts, he realized he wasn't going to be able to blow anything up.

Dalton loved the bottle rockets because they whistled and then popped. Half of our fireworks never worked which was really frustrating. Here he is imitating what the bottle rocket will do.

Like I said, the kids loved dancing in the colored smoke. The white smoke smelled really bad.

Dalton did a great job lighting fireworks. He put several packages of jumping jacks together on numerous occasions and then lit them. He would proudly smile and say, "that was 10" and walk away.

Jayden spent most of the time covering his ears. He later threw tantrums and screamed. Hard to believe that cute face was capable of turning not so cute.

I'm questioning if I have a future police officer on my hands? She looks pretty serious.

Or maybe it's just the mouthful of sunflower seeds in her mouth. Or maybe she's getting ticked because she couldn't get the gun to go off. Neither could Shawndra.

One of our blue smoke balls took off rolling down the driveway while it was lit and it left blue circles all down the driveway. That was very funny.

Shawndra had fun with the sparklers at night. Between her, Devin, and Joseph, I'm not sure who liked those more!

We went to the parade on the 4th. That was fun, but once again, Jayden covered his ears the whole time. He's not crazy about loud noises. I think this years parade was better than past years. We then headed to the Uncle Sam Jam and stayed for about an hour. I have some cute pictures of that too. I'll post later about those. It was so hot we left fairly early. We finally ended the night by going back into town for the fireworks display. All 8 of us ended up sitting in the truck because the mosquitoes were so bad.