Independence Day

Did you celebrate the 4th of July this month? Chances are, if you live in the USA, you probably did. We live in a sovereign nation within the USA, but apparently we can still celebrate too!
There are no parades within an hour and a half of where we live, so we didn't get to go collect candy (bummer.) The closest place with fireworks is 40 minutes away, and prior to this year it seemed too late to be driving that far, so we always did a few sparklers at home instead. Our kids are little, they don't care.
But we had a lot of fun watching the fireworks at Grandma's house last summer, and since they remembered it, we figured we'd take the kids to town to see them this year. Now they weren't anything like a bigger city- and nothing like those we used to watch in Logan just across the street from where we lived. But they were still fun!
We brought our sparklers with us too, which we lit off while we waited for the big show.  We were actually by a bunch of other parked cars, but we were on the very end of the row so we were able to keep them out of the picture-and catch the beautiful sunset at the same time! Of course, whenever everyone moved to the wrong side of the camera (by the cars and away from the pretty sunset) I ordered them back to the good side.

Elora and Jonah

This was Eli's first real time getting to play with sparklers. At first he loved it.

light me up, daddio.

Everyone ran around like crazy spinning their sparklers and enjoying the pyrotechnics.

















































Eli was copying Jonah and laughing maniacally as he waved his sparkly banner around; several times I had to remind him to hold his hand up high, as he and Jonah seemed to be trying to light the grass on fire! All was fun and games, until Eli held his sparkler a little too close to his face. I think and errant spark got on him and made him nervous. He proceeded to try and wipe the spark away from his head- with the hand that was still holding the sparkler!
I alerted Daddy to the danger, and he pulled Eli's hand away from his head and patted at his hair, just in case.




















After that though, Eli wasn't so keen on his fiery toy.

























When Daddy lit the next one, he smiled at first, then quickly held it away from himself and shielded his face. Poor little guy! He didn't cry or anything, but now he recognized the danger and didn't want much to do with it.




















That was okay though. It was finally getting darker, and the big display was going to happen soon.





















It made for a late night for all, but we had fun celebrating our Nation's independence! (And our neighbors had fun celebrating for the next week or so...I picked up about 100 bottle rockets in front of the school the following week!)

sweet dreams!