Sunday, July 12, 2009

4th of July - Replay...

We had so much fun on the 4th of July this year.

First Jon and the kids were amazing really working hard to get the house cleaned up on Friday. He really had the kids working in the kitchen showing them how to scrub down the counters and doing dishes. Joe loves to do dishes, good for him. I tried to keep up with them, but still feeling under the weather kind of hampered my progress, except in the laundry department…how does that add up so quickly? This helped so much, though, for me to feel more relaxed about people coming over. It made Sunday much easier for me to have some people over and not become over-frantic with cleaning. Also, let’s face it. Nothing will ever be ‘perfect’ enough to have people over at our house, it just needs to be acceptable. I feel like we are no longer living in CHAOS, wink, wink, Flylady.

So Saturday comes and I finished up cleaning the kitchen and picking up the house, again with a lot of help from Jon and the kids. While I was taking a shower I decided right then that I would have fun no matter what. Even if it was 120 degrees outside, I felt horrible, or the kids were whiny, I was determined to have a great time. No stress allowed. So, what happened? I had a great time.

A friend of our family and his daughter came and my parents were there. Joe and Joci loved hanging out with Delaney. She did Joci’s hair, they played upstairs and outside, it was so nice to have them playing quietly, not arguing or fighting with anyone. The kids loved the hotdogs and the watermelon, I enjoyed the burger and the waldorf salad. I took a few pictures, but the kids were having too much fun to sit still for photos.

Later we left to go see some fireworks. Ok, so we didn’t really plan this very well. Earlier in the day we had decided to go to our local High School that was having a little festival, or so we thought. Apparently, it was a HUGE event. All of Gilbert seemed to have the same idea and was there. In fact, they had the street closed off that the HS sits on as there were too many people there already. Our last minute decision was to pull into the parking lot of a local strip mall to watch. It was lots of fun. Joci really enjoyed the show and I enjoyed watching her react to the fireworks and dance around to the music. Honestly, though, I was a little disappointed in the fireworks. They were close enough to see clearly, but too far away to truly enjoy the show. Oh well. Joe was a little let down, too, remembering our last fireworks display was at Schnepf farm pretty much sitting right under the show. It was still fun and we laughed at all the people that got there early before the show and left early before the show was over to get out of the parking lot before anyone else.

We headed back home after that. Jon and the kids got to set off some of the poppers that he had gotten for the kids, which of course they loved. Everyone, including Clay our boxer, liked throwing the snappers at the ground. I personally, like the poppers the best. I love the smell of the sulfur after you set one off.

It was an excellent day spent having fun with family and friends, an amazing way to celebrate our Nation’s Birthday!

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