Fabulous Fourth!

Well, yesterday was the 4th of July. For the first time ever, we celebrated it in our very own house! The first year we moved up here, 2006, we celebrated it in the "temporary house", as I coined it, where we lived while our current house was being built. The next 4 years, we were always down in Little Rock visiting family. But this year, with my knee being bummed and having 2 trips to Little Rock in the past month under our belt anyway, we decided to stay home.

We had a wonderful weekend! It felt like a stay-cation rather than just a weekend. Friday night, Jim and I went on a date. (Thank you whoever got us the Pesto Cafe gift card at Christmas!) Saturday, we went to a fashion show at the NWA Mall and saw the first round of an ice cream eating contest. The fashion show was kind of boring so we ended up shopping at Claire's, the girls' new favorite store. (earrings and all that.....)

Saturday night, the mall hosted a fireworks show. It was great! Free entertainment. We sat outside our van and ate snacks waiting on the show to start. Little J4 LOVED it! He clapped and stomped and squealed!

But right now I want to talk about last night. Well, or just show pictures. That's why everyone "reads" blogs anyway, right? LOL!

For starters, we had a cookout. Jim grilled some hamburgers and hot dogs. Since he was the one who went to the grocery store for me last week, he bought exactly what was on my list! Hence, we had no potato chips, potato salad, french fries, or anything like that. Oops.....my bad. We did have hamburgers and hot dogs and they were mighty tasty! Jim is definitely a grill master!

Then, partly because I'd been considering it all week, and partly due to my friend Amy's blog, I made a flag cake. Mine is hardly the "Best Ever", but it was good. At least Jim and the kids ate it.

After supper, we shot off fireworks. And with 2 girls in the house and a safety conscious father......


We shot off.......smoke balls!


We've even officially left our mark on this place: Oops.....

I was very proud of both girls. They each learned how to light a smoke ball safely. I'm also proud of J4 for not being scared of fireworks at all!
And for learning how to sit STILL in a chair and not stand in it:
Well, ok, maybe we're still working on that......(he later fell sideways out of this very chair. Didn't have time to get a picture of that one....)

Here is the front walk all set up:
The boys weren't totally left out with only "girlie" fireworks to shoot. Jim and J4 had 100 firecrackers! I think they shot maybe 30 or so.....and by "they", I mean Jim. J4 can learn how in a few years.

A firecracker:
A ground flower:
Tequila Sunrise Fountain, Stage 1:
Tequila Sunrise Fountain, Stage 2:
Alpha couldn't pronounce "tequila", and I was rather pleased at that.

To top the night off, we had 4 or 5 neighbors in various places in our neighborhood, who went all out. They bought the family packs. The BIG ONES! The artillery shells or whatever they're called. So we saw this around us all night:


We got to enjoy those nice big fireworks, like they had at the show on Saturday night, a second time! From our very own yard. Without paying a cent for them! Awesome!

I could have sat out there all night under the stars watching the big fireworks. But that's about when J4 fell out of the chair and started crying so I ended up going and putting him to bed. Ah well. It was still an awesome weekend!