4th of July

The 4th of July is my favorite holiday!  Cookouts, beautiful weather, swimming & fireworks!  How could you not love the 4th? 

O-4, L-6, A-7

Our 4th started off early with going to the parade.  Every year we've gone the LaPorte parade.  The kids love the fly over by some pretty cool planes!  It's always so crowded.  We don't have someone in LaPorte to save us a seat a day or 2 before so we always get smashed in the back of people and my kids are miserable.  Why did we keep going there?  No idea!  This year we went to the Portage parade.  I enjoyed it but had some major issues with it! 

1.  During a parade you sit at the curb.  You do not stand in the middle of the road!  I saw one kid almost make a biker wreck!
2.  Throw candy to the curb so the kids don't run to the middle of the road. 

People are so rude!  We had a great front curb seat and people were standing in front of us.  WHO DOES THIS?

The parade was good.  The kids got tons of candy.  They were pumped when they saw Scooby in the parade!!

Scooby was in Portage!!

After the parade we went home!  My awesome family of 5 went on a 5 mile bike ride!  During our ride we saw some bullfrogs, turtles and goldfish!  At the end of the ride Addison (my athletic child) laid on the ground and said she was poofed out!  In the middle of the ride we had to stop at the park so the kids could play and take a little break!  I think I needed the break more than the kids!  Owen was in the child seat on my bike.  He is a BIG boy!!!

That night we went to the LaPorte firework show!  This was a first for us!  We normally do a pretty good show at home and don't go see public fireworks.  We got there around 7:30.  The kids were bored by 7:45!  They had all kinds of vendors (yummy fair food & pricey kid toys)!!  The smart and amazing mom that I am (  :-D ) brought my own glow sticks ($1.00 from Target for 10).  The kids loved that they had way more than everyone else and I loved that I only paid a dollar for them!  We saw Addison's 1st grade teacher.  Addison has been missing her big time so she loved seeing her!!  The fireworks finally started around 9:45!!  Next time I think I will show up at 9:30!!  Tons of space left and my kids can not sit that long!!!  Kyle and I wanted to punch some parents sitting next to us!  One dad was screaming and swearing at his kids.  Another parent was trying to sleep and got pissed every time her kids touched her.  A dad had his little kid do sparklers DIRECTLY behind us.  I was for sure that my hair was going to catch on fire!  Not sure how I got so lucky! 

After fireworks were over we rushed to our car.  We got there before most!!  It didn't matter though.  We sat in our car trying to reverse for 30 minutes!  Nobody would let us out.  Finally someone cut the rope in front of us and we pulled forward.  Because of this we were able to get out before all of those rude people who wouldn't let us out!  OH.. Addison gave some bracelets to some girls sitting next to us.  That mom was the only person who let us get in front of her to get out!  

 

All day I couldn't believe how rude people were.  I try to be nice to everyone and I teach my kids the same thing.  Some days I feel like I need to teach my kids to be little assholes so they can live in this crazy world! 

 

On Saturday we had a cookout at my father inlaws!  The kids were so excited to go swimming. They had some great water gun wars!

 

Fantastic week!!  Can't wait for next years 4th of July!!