4th of July...Lots of Pictures

Sunday morning we got up and started our day of fun. We got the car packed up and everyone dressed. The boys wore new shirts and bathing suits from Grammy. Their shirts were a little long so we cut the bottom off which Ben put around their heads and they left them on for most of the day (Ryder longer than Zak).

We left the house around 10:30am and made the drive into Annapolis. We got a great parking spot by going in early so that was nice. The boys had a lunch picnic with everyone at Colleen's house which was fun.

We then moved outside to let all of the kids play. At that time Chelley, Jon & Madelyn arrived for the fun. Madelyn definitely enjoys to sit back and lounge on anybody that will let her!

After a while we took all of the kids to Kay's house to play in her yard for a while. They had the baby pool set up and we brought our sprinkler for the kids to play with also.

the boys playing with Nathan in the sprinkler

(Kay's son who is 3 weeks younger than the boys)

This is the look Maddie gave Chelley when she

called her name and told her not to go any further!

While at Kay's Joey set up her yearly lemonade stand.

This year Jamison helped out a lot with getting customers.

Nathan and the boys playing

After we were done at Kay's house we got all of the kids dry and back into their patriotic clothes then headed back to Colleen's house. The kids played for a little bit and then we headed to Church Circle for the parade.

It was HOT so I brought spray bottles to the parade

The boys enjoyed spraying each other

It is impossible to get a picture with BOTH looking at the camera

Zak waiving at the people trying to get them to throw candy!

Election years always mean more candy

Every time something in the parade was loud or

scared Ryder he would cover his mouth

The parade did not seem very fun this year. They didn't have any cool cars or anything really fun. I asked everyone on the walk home if we were just getting older or if the parades seem worse...they all agreed the parades seem to be getting worse! When we got back to Colleen's house the grill was on and we had our annual 4th of July cook-out. We had tons of food and the kids had fun running around and playing in the yard again. Around 9pm we headed down towards City Dock to watch the fireworks. At first Zak was scared, but then once Joey showed up he was happy.

Ryder covered his mouth once again

My 3 guys

After the fireworks were done we walked back to Colleen's to have some dessert. The boys had fun playing with the spray bottles while the adults all talked. After the traffic slowed down a bit we headed to the car. The traffic was pretty bad until we got onto 50 then it was pretty smooth sailing. The boys were both asleep before we made it out of downtown Annapolis. We made it home around midnight and the boys didn't wake up when we moved them out of the car and into their beds. Ben and I stayed up for a little while putting things away and finally went to bed around 1:30am.

Overall, we all had a good day. It was HOT and not everything went as planned, but I think it was a good day for the most part. I am such a creature of habit (as are some others in my family) so when things change with tradition and holidays it can be a little difficult, but such is life.