I Heart Fireworks!

Finally into July!! Took me long enough. Seeing as it's now September!

The July 4th weekend was especially fun this year. First of all, Uncle Sean & Auntie Sarah were in town. Sean is in the Coast Guard and for the last 4 years they have been stationed in the frozen tundra of Northern Michigan. Other than a few trips out here and our visit last summer, we don't see them nearly enough and miss them a lot! So we were very excited to hear we would get to see them as they moved to their new station....Hawaii! We're very excited for them! And not at all jealous. Okay, maybe like 80% excited and 20% jealous! =D

We spent the afternoon of July 4th with them and Grandma Judy. The 4th of July is sort of Grandma Judy's Christmas. She exudes patriotism! She even got the kids their own patriotic outfits for the day, which they looked adorable in!

A girl and her daddy


Auntie Sarah


Grandma Judy


With her Grandbabies


I just love this pic of her. Such beautiful eyes and a sweet smile!


For some reason I have no pictures of Sean! But I recently received pictures from their visit just a few weeks prior, right after McKenna was born, so I'm going to post them here. It's my blog, I can be wild and crazy like that.

Uncle Sean with a 2 week old McKenna




The 4th was a Sunday so we had church that night. After what seems like a good hour of clean up, we hustled our way to watch fireworks with friends at one of the local high schools. Its soccer field is right near the big park where they show fireworks. It's the perfect location! We get all the good views of the fireworks but none of the crowds. Which, when you have a nearly 2 year old that needs to run to spend at least a portion of his excess energy, is a HUGE blessing!

While we waited, the kids played with a stomp rocket Rebecca brought. Her dad helped all the kids launch their rockets. Austin didn't weigh nearly enough to get it to launch, but they were successful when her dad would pick Austin up and sorta drop him onto the launch pad. Austin had a blast! (No pun intended)

Mid running-around-like-a-crazy-man


The Millers' beautiful granddaughter Avery


Me and my baby girl all snuggled into the ergo


A family portrait


Austin waiting for his turn on the stomp rockets


Blast off


Jack mid-stomp rocket


The crowd


It was cold!




My favorite part of the night was the fireworks. I heart fireworks! I was very excited to see Austin's reaction to them. I think he liked them. He just sat there quietly, somewhat in awe, but mostly just happy to be eating cookies! (Golden Oreos rock!)



Also, I was excited to try to catch some good firework shots with my fancy smancy new camera. A tripod would have been a good thing to bring, but I was pretty happy with the ones I did get!