4th of July 2012

For the 4th I took the kids to the Liberty Day Parade in downtown Boise. I was surprised by how long the parade was. I think it was at least 45 minutes long which surprised me. The had a great time watching the cars drive by and collecting candy from people in the parade.

After the parade we had a pool party/BBQ with some family and long time friends at our house. The kids are becoming quite the little swimmers. Pennington can drive down for rings in the pool. He is practicing kicking and swimming out to someone in the pool that is 5 to 10 feet away. Once he gets his breathing down we will have a really swimmer on our hands. Piper is practicing as well but isn't quite as confident as Pennington. The good news is that the kids really enjoy swimming and are getting increasingly better every time we put them in the pool. The bad news is that they don't like to wear the life jackets even for a few minutes just to give Mom and Dad a break.

After swimming and dinner we stopped by a few friends houses to say hi before the annual fireworks party in the cul-de-sac. The fireworks in the cul-de-sac were a huge hit. Both Pennington and Piper did sparklers. After every fireworks display Pennington would give everyone high fives. The evening ended around 10:15 which is super late for the kids. They went to sleep right away.  Below are some pictures from 4th of July.

Watching the parade.

 Bagpipers

 Old cars

 Waving our flags

 Waving our sparklers

 Fireworks show

As a continuation of the July 4th festivities, Johnny and I spent the rest of the holiday weekend together. Johnny and I had our 5th year anniversary on June 24. To celebrate we decided to have a few days away from the kids. We drove to Wallowa Lake in Oregon and camped out for one night and then headed up to Seattle to see some friends and go to a Sounders game. It was a great little 4 day getaway that was definitely needed. Thank you Nonni and Grandma for watching the kids while we were gone.