A Very Belated 4th of July

Well, let's just say I've never been known for my promptness. 

We had a great time celebrating our Nation's birthday.  We didn't do anything in particular, but we did manage a lot and it was all together.  We started the day at the Ward breakfast.  It rained and rained and rained all morning.  It wasn't too cold if you stayed dry, but they'd brought a slip 'n slide.  Most people under the age of 16 were soaked.  I was grateful that we convinced our kids that it really wouldn't be that fun in the end.  Some might say that was mean of us and they they need to enjoy being kids, but poor Bekah would have been blue in 5 minutes.  During the breakfast the rain broke just in time for the parade. 

Let me break here and share a bit of history that I just learned about southwest Ohio.  Way back before there were any cities there were just small towns made up of a few farms.  They were spaced out too much to really be considered anything significant so they created townships in an effort to bring the towns together occasionally to decide governing principles.  When the townships got big enough they were supposed to become cities and drop the township.  Southwest Ohio didn't want to do that.  So we now have towns, cities, AND townships that apparently can't coincide one big 4th of July Celebration.  They left it to the smaller towns and townships to figure out.  So in essence, there are a lot of small parades and fireworks displays all over the greater part of Cincy and it's hard to know when and where they are. 

It just so happened that one of the parades was going right by the park we were in.  So we sat on a wet curb and collected way too much candy for the lot of us, but had a great time.  The kids are finally old enough that they're getting the hang of it.  We opened a sucker for Andrew and he was content to suck on it and climb on and off the curb the whole time.  'Course he put his sucker on the street every time he did this....that was gross.  But honestly?  What are you supposed to do about that except hope that their immune system is getting stronger?  :)

We came home very full and happy.  Most of the fireworks were happening on Sunday so we were stuck.  But then we realized that a big one was happening at a major theme park that wasn't too far from one of our friends.  We called and asked (presumptuously) if we could come watch with them.  We gave our kids a good nap and headed over very late.  We got there just in time and enjoyed the fireworks.  I did miss the music attached to the show, but fireworks are still pretty cool.  We finished off the night with a root beer float and the kids screaming downstairs while they rode bikes in the basement. 
We have some friends down the street who invited us to dinner on Monday (the national day off) and it was sunny so we got to play in the water.