fourth of july (2017)

Three weeks later… and I’m finally writing about our Independence Day! Whoops. We had an amazing four-day weekend and truly enjoyed filling our time up with family, friends, and good food.

To start off the holiday, we needed some matching patriotic outfits, of course. Apparently, this is the face Nella makes when she’s very excited about something!
Kaelyn is always the first one who wants to be done having her picture taken. This was too classic to leave out. This girl and her dog… I absolutely love them together.Michael worked on painting our front door and priming our kitchen early in the day. There’s always a project to be done around here, and I’m glad he’s so willing to do it. In the process, we discovered that our previously blue door had apparently been red at some point. (If you remember our basement, it’s pretty obvious that one of the previous homeowners loved red!)
This was Nella’s “last first” holiday, so there had to be some pictures of just her in her patriotic garb. What’s cuter than a baby in holday-themed apparel? Answer: Nothing. That’s what. One of the families we know at church had a huge, open-invitation, cookout at their home- I think nearly half the ward (congregation) showed up that evening. See that ripped up hot dog bun? That’s what happens when you try to fill up your plate while also holding a baby who likes to grab everything! Really though, any meal that includes mac ‘n cheese is an automatic success. I don’t know how many of these cute smiley-faced cookies my girls ate…… and Nella was still really excited about everything! The kids all got to play an egg-toss game, but it started to pour down rain right in the middle of it all. It’s a tradition of ours to go to the town firework show, but we really didn’t want to sit out in the rain, so we stayed at the barbecue a little longer. They shot off some small fireworks, and we had sparklers for the kids.

Kaelyn was afraid and wanted nothing to do with the sparklers, but we managed to convince Kaya that they’d be fun, and she couldn’t get enough of them after she started.
We stayed out a lot later than we normally do (since we became parents, anyway), and I think this is how we all felt the next morning!