The holidays make it so much harder to live so far away from our family. I really hadn’t thought about it before, but the 4th of July really seems to be a family holiday. I mean, we always spent lots of weekends, not just holidays, with our families, but the 3rd and 4th of July we were always out at the lake - good ole Mason Lake…oh, how I miss the northwest… We’d spend the weekend eating, swimming, floating, eating, boating, eating, swimming, watching all the huge fireworks go off, swimming later in the dark, sometimes “sneaking” out on the seadoo in the middle of the night. Sitting underneath my mom’s homemade quilts, fighting over who was going to go get the s’mores stuff, complaining that the smoke from the fire was always blowing in my face, getting holes burned in my pants from sparklers, melting my shoes on the fire because the log botherers made the dagum thing so hot…. This is my 2nd 4th of July out here in Wichita, and I just can’t believe I’m missing all the parties again, and it feels so weird to just be hangin’ out at home. I love hangin’ out with my little family, but it just feels like we’re missing something. If, I mean, when :) we move back to Washington, I swear I am going to go out of my way to find the people I know who have no family in the area and invite them to our family gatherings. Now that I am an outsider, with no family or longtime friends in the area, I know how lonely even these small holidays can be. Anyway, boo hoo, poor me…it’s really not that bad. We have had a bunch of fun today. Our original plan was to go out to El Dorado State Park in the morning, before all the heat hit, and hike around on some trails there with the kids, but since it POURED down rain last night, we figured the trails were going to be mostly mud, so we scratched that plan. After I fixed breakfast and got Willow down for a nap, I strapped on my shoes and pounded out some pavement. After being somewhat quarantined in the house last week with the kids being so sick with colds, it felt so good to get out of the house by myself, even though it was muggy beyond belief thanks to the rain and my head is still quite plugged up from my cold…man, am I complainy or what???? Good grief! Changing topics already!

We got Jayden some fireworks this year, because well, they are just so fun. Jayden helped me pick some out for him and the one he was most excited about, even though he had no idea what it was going to do, was these racing cars. You lit them on fire and they were suppose to race down the street.

The first one was a bust. It’s back wheels melted off before it went anywhere. Thank goodness for the second one that did what it was suppose to!

And then there were the snaps! I think I still love playing with snaps! These were by far Jayden’s favorite. Although, we haven’t busted out the sparklers yet.

And smoke bombs!

We spent some time playing in the back yard too. Our neighbors down the street came and gave Jayden some more toys for his sandbox, so we had to try those out!

And while Willow has no idea what is going on, we decked her out in a patriotic outfit!

Royal took a picture of me, just so you could all see I was around too! :)

When Willow went down for another nap, Royal had some stuff for work he needed to work on, so Jayden and I decided to go wash the cars. After Jayden sprayed me twice in the face with the hose set on the power washer setting, that responsibility got taken away. So, he got demoted to just washing. Which as it turns out, he didn’t think was that much fun. He started just playing with the bucket of suds, throwing all the bubbles out, then he decided to get in the bucket.

As it turns out, the bucket had bubbles, so that means it was perfect for a bubble bath. Bye-bye clothes.

Now we’re just waiting for the sun to go down so we can bust out some sparklers and then we’re going to sit on the porch and watch everybody else to shoot off their fireworks!