We always have a lot of fun on the 4th of July! It was my favorite holiday growing up (yes, even over Christmas!) because our extended family has always had a lot of fun traditions. We had a lot of fun this year too!
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| Ashlyn enjoyed the parade with Aunt Jodee. |
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| We had a great time hanging out at the Doman's after the parade for a picnic lunch. |
Tons of us Whittier cousins were able to attend Lora's bridal shower that afternoon as well! It was a good time, I laughed SO hard and it was fun to visit with lots of the fun ladies in our family, and eat treats of course! (this is the only picture I got from that, so nice I know.)
We also had lots of fun at the traditional BBQ at Grandma's house! She lives right on the river, so we couldn't have better seating for the big
Melaleuca Freedom Celebration (yes it has that fancy name) fireworks each year!
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| A picture of Grandma Great with 2/3 of her great grandchildren! |
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| One of the 30 or so hilarious outtakes of trying to get that picture to happen! |
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| Hangin' with her peeps... |
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| Our one and only family pic of the day... Ashlyn was a little busy with her potato chip! |
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| Playing with cousins--so fun! |
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| Initial reaction to the dry ice for rootbeer |
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| Oh yeah! It's totally fun! |
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| Having fun with Uncle Paul.... |
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| ....for a brief moment! |
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| Grandma Great addressing us all--I love this woman and that beautiful smile! |
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| We got serenaded by Danessa, Jodee, Jesslyn and Cecily. |
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| Ashlyn couldn't resist Nessa's guitar playing for long! |
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| These two were adorable together! Ellie is a good 1 year older than Ashlyn but they're the same size! :) |
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| Watching the "little" fireworks with Uncle Al |
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| Watching the REAL fireworks with Daddy! |
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| My awesome attempt at catching some of the beauty of the fireworks! |
Actually, a side note about the fireworks--they sucked! Not the actual fireworks, but events leading up to them! I guess some drunk guy had gotten lost in a swim in the river (which is where they light the fireworks--not really a swimmer-friendly river section, mind you.), and therefore the fireworks were postponed for an hour as search and rescue were out looking for him. Definitely sad, they did end up finding him, drowned, the next morning. :( So that was sad, and the other thing that was sad that night was our kid!! I would never have stuck around with her for the fireworks if I had known they weren't starting until 11:00... 10:00 was pushing it but that extra hour really made things not so easy. The fireworks were great bu,t at that point I really just wanted to get out of there. And it just isn't possible after like 9:00pm at my Grandma's. She lives right on the river and once the curbside parking fills up, people just double and triple park so that there is literally no way any of us parked in front of her house can get out until a good 30 minutes after the fireworks. Sigh. But we survived. Ashlyn enjoyed watching the big fireworks for about 10 minutes...then got restless and wandered around and eventually ended up hanging out on the steps with Aunt Mel (hi Aunt Mel! *waving*). I think a small piece of my soul died during the 20+ minute drive home at 12:30am with Ashlyn screaming bloody murder the entire way. Sigh. But well, things could have been worse! It did make for some additional fun the next morning at family pictures, but that is for a different post!
Happy Independence Day!
1 comment:
I was pleasantly surprised that she would sit by me on the steps for a little while. Hope that means she isn't afraid of me and likes me? It's hard to tell with a 2 yr. old! She is a doll! Glad we could "hang" for a few minutes.
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