Marvelous Monday!

Nothing mundane about this one! Fourth of July! Woohoo!

I love holidays. I love having something to celebrate. I love traditions. I love the marking of time even though it makes me sad sometimes. I love them so much that I occasionally get a little uptight about the festivities. I'm not a perfectionist at all whatsoever. What we do doesn't have to be perfect, but we have to do SOMETHING!! I think it was when I realized that this was Nola THIRD Fourth of July that I sort of freaked out on the inside. She's already had three of these! We only have fifteen Fourth of July's left with her! (Assuming she magically turns into a complete adult overnight and leaves our home at the age of eighteen never to be seen again.) I was scrambling for traditions.

Since the Fourth of July was Monday this year, the whole weekend felt like a holiday to me. We left Nola's kiddie pool outside the whole weekend. We left it in the driveway which looked a little ghetto. Sorry neighbors. But this way it got soaked in sunlight and was practically a hot tub for the girls. Violet doesn't seem to be a huge fan of the water, but I think we may have been catching her too close to nap times every time we took her out. Nola doesn't like to put her face or head in the water, but she loves playing with toys. She spent most of the time getting in and out of it. She would grab her floatie, which she called "rescue boat", throw it out of the water and then go get it yelling, "Say Rescue Boat!" Followed by a pause while she waited for the audience to respond and finishing off with "Good yelling!" Thank you, Dora and Diego.

The girls slept late on Monday morning. It really felt like a holiday. After breakfast, which included an appetizer of a popsicle for Nolie (This was a last minute purchase while I was scrambling for traditions to make this the best Fourth of July ever since we only have fifteen left), we went for our last swim of the weekend. The water had turned a little cloudy by Monday. Eeew.

We had scrambled eggs and sausage in tortillas for lunch. I'm getting better at making home made tortillas, and faster. I was proud of how quickly I rolled them out.

Nola and I made a Fourth of July treat. We dipped strawberries in white chocolate and then dipped them in blue mini m&ms. The m&ms were a little too big and heavy, but they still tasted good. I was supposed to use blue sugar crystals. Guess who was out of all things red and blue for cake decorating? Hy-Vee the night before the Fourth of July. So I bought a bag of mini m&ms and sorted all the blue ones out like a maniac.

The girls took naps in the afternoon and Ryan and I fought about vacuuming. I'll spare you the details. But we were both wrong and we said we were sorry and we forgave each other.

Once the girls were up we headed to Ryan's parents for dinner. I brought along some flour and a huge star stencil to make patriotic stars on their front lawn. It worked pretty well. Next year we'll do a bigger stencil. We were copying these people.

We did a few fireworks at Ryan's parents house, and then everyone followed us back to our house. We put Violet to bed and then proceeded to shoot loud fireworks off right beneath her window for a couple hours. Poor thing. She slept right through it though. It was fun for Nola being old enough to stay up and watch the Fireworks. She liked them. Every once in a while she thought maybe they were scaring her, but then she'd jump right back into it. She loved the snappers. Of course. Who doesn't? Those things are awesome. And she loved the snakes.


When it finally got dark we took a little walk down the street and up the hill, while Grandpa stayed with Violet. Our neighborhood is just perfect for seeing the fireworks all across the city. We saw quite a few of those floating lanterns, too.

And that was the end. It was a good Fourth. How was yours?