A Fabulous 4th of July

On July 3, we were back to "normal" since all our company was gone.  I decided to give the kids the rest of the week off from workbooks since the week was almost over anyway.  Both Emily and Jonathan still had some thank you notes to finish up from birthday parties, so they worked on those for the morning.  After lunch, we made some fun shirts for the 4th.  The instructions didn't exactly work, but they still turned out pretty cute!  The kids each picked their own colors, so only Emily's was super patriotic.  (She was very concerned about this.)

After working on shirts, Jon, Abby, and Ben disappeared to play.  Emily had enjoyed the patriotic craft so much that she wanted to keep crafting.  She did some research and figured out a wreath that she could make.  I helped her print the stars out from the computer, but she did the rest of the work and design by herself.  She spent all afternoon coloring stars!  We did take a break in the afternoon to try some fruity yogurt drinks, which were pretty delicious.

Friday morning we had a slow start.  All of us were tired from a busy couple of weeks, and Jay had the day off.  After a breakfast of banana bread waffles, we went to the store to get groceries for the weekend and paint for Jay and my bedroom.  (It's needed painting since we moved in and we finally decided what color we wanted.)  After lunch, everyone had some quiet time so they'd be ready for fireworks and a late night.

The patriotic crew in their new shirts.

Jay built a sandbox for the kids last spring.  It was starting to fall apart in spots and needed some improvements, so Friday afternoon he started tearing it apart to put it back together again.  He had plenty of helpers!  Of course, they were more interested in playing in the sand than actually putting the sandbox back together!  Jay did a beautiful job-- he put a new liner in the sandbox, attached a lid, and started putting a walkway around it.  It should give the kids plenty of playtime.



It was super hot, so we made some iced hot chocolate for our snack.  Jay is usually at work when we have our crazy snacks, so he was amused to get to participate.  The kids thought the whipped cream was the best part of this one!

Our favorite part of most holidays is the food.  Independence day means cooking out!  We had an amazingly delicious dinner.  Emily had helped cut up vegetables for the pasta salad, so we felt like it was a group effort.

After dinner, the kids all got baths and put on comfy clothes so they'd be ready for fireworks.  Even Benjamin was excited to go this year.  Jay packed everyone up and off they went.  (I'd had a touch of Jonathan's crud all week and wasn't feeling up to sitting out in the heat.)  It had been raining and thunderstorming off and on all afternoon, so we didn't know if there would be delays with the fireworks.  They went off on time, but they all felt a little let down this year; the show wasn't as good as some years.  All four kids barely made it to bed before crashing.

Saturday we were planning on cleaning and organizing our room so that we can get ready to paint.  Jay decided to start outside finishing the sandbox project while the sun was on the other side of the house.  Even without the sun beating down on him, he came in dripping.  But the sandbox area is finished and beautiful!  (Except for 3 more bricks where he ran out...)

Meanwhile, I worked on our room.  Somehow everything of everyone's ends up on top of my dresser!  I got all of it sorted out and then decided that I needed some more storage containers.  A run to Target and Michael's and I came home with four containers and two picture frames.  More organization to happen in the future!

After all the excitement of the last couple days, the kids had trouble settling down to sleep Saturday night, except Ben who was asleep in about 2 minutes.  It was especially hard since a lot of the neighbors were still shooting off fireworks and we could hear the rain delayed show from Fulshear.  Jay and I had no problems, though!  All that cleaning is hard work!

It was a great 4th weekend and back to reality on Monday!