the fourth

I hope everyone had a great July 4th weekend!

Normally, we spend every July 4th with my grandparents and extended family on my dad's side. This year, we decided to keep it easy. We did our own thing and invited Brad's family over for a cookout and fireworks.

Noah and his cousin Riley (and her friend Ashley)

Noah and Kalyb being silly

We had so much fun. We just did hot dogs, corn on the cob, baked beans, watermelon... all the usual fun stuff. I made some homemade strawberry ice cream, which as it turns out, I should've tripled the recipe. Everyone wanted more, but I didn't make enough! Oops. I did make confetti cupcakes though, with rainbow chip icing. I was going for a firework theme. :)

We ate outside on our picnic table and patio. After dinner, the family played ultimate frisbee while I tried to clean up and give Noah a bath.

Lia was my hero of the night. I came downstairs with Noah, after his bath, and my kitchen was spotless. I could've kissed her. But that would've been weird, so I just gave her a hug and said thank you over and over instead. :)

We were originally planning on going to the US National Whitewater Center to watch fireworks, since it's not that far from our house. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea. There were cars EVERYWHERE. The parking lot was full, so people were parking at the middle school nearby, but that lot was getting full too. Plus, had we tried to turn around to actually attempt parking there, we would've spent a good hour in line and missed it all.

We looked at the time and realized we had 20 minutes to make it downtown in time for their fireworks. So that's what we did. Brad and his dad are maniac drivers, but that's kind of what we needed in this case. We parked in the Target lot and went on the roof to watch them. We were just in time, and it was great.

Noah likes fireworks