It started with the City of Mesa fireworks show on Saturday night. The show started at 9:30, I got off work at 9:30, and I work for Mesa PD, and the headquarters building is located right in downtown. My family just met me at work and I let them into the parking garage where we parked on the roof for an awesome view of the show. My sister and her family came which added awesomeness.
Monday we started early with a parade at 9:00 AM at the church. All the kids from church decorated their bikes and scooters, or decorated themselves and just walked, and marched around the parking lot. It was pretty much adorable. Then the church provided a yummy breakfast. I had to grab two kids and leave a tad early for swimming lessons, which was also awesome. Riding bikes in a parking lot in July in Arizona, followed by a dip in the pool? Amazing!
Then Mom got a nap. Always part of a best day ever.
Followed by a trip to Superstition Springs Mall! We ate lunch in the food court, let Grace jump around in the play area, introduced Ember to the Tinkerbell store (lots of pre-teen ooh's and aah's at all the sparklies), played on the turtle statue, and had all kinds of fun.
Then.... our first 3D movie ever! It's awesome that the cheap theater also shows 3D movies so we can afford to take the kids, it's only $4 a person. We saw Rio, and it was hillarious! Lots of laugh out loud moments, I love to hear my kids giggle. And the 3D stuff was pretty much awesome, all I'd ever seen before was Captain Eo at Disneyland.
From there we went to Walmart to get all the fixin's for a backyard BBQ, and to purchase some explosives. The last time I handled a firework was on the farm in Idaho when I was 6 or 7, holding a sparkler. Good times, good times.
We went to Casey and Celeste's for dinner, since they have a grill that works and has propane. Plus their yard is across the street from the Mesa Country Club, which had a fireworks show at 9:00 and can be seen from the back yard. Sweet.
Austin is a master griller. Wait, that's not true, I can't lie. Ask any one of our kids... the hamburgers were kinda crispy. Grace had the right idea going with barbecued chicken, he mostly got that right. The strawberries were yummy though, and patriotic!
After dinner was the hard part... waiting for dark. It took FOREVER! (About an hour and a half, but Ben says that's a lie). We watched cartoons until it was time to start blowing stuff up. Austin got to play with the big stuff in the street, and the kids looked on while playing with sparklers. It's difficult to take pictures of kids at night, in the dark, no flash, with sparklers in the foreground. I'm NOT a photographer, and the blurry effect is cool anyway, so my pictures are pretty much amazing. Adria liked the first sparkler she held, but she accidentally grabbed the top of it after it had gone out and burned her fingers a little bit. The second sparkler we tried to give her was a little scary, I feel bad that I don't have pictures of the first one. She really did have fun! Our kids sure do love making their sweet little cousin laugh and smile.
We had cupcakes with patriotic sprinkles while we watched the big show from the back yard, then cleaned up our mess, and came home. We even had a little time throughout the day to talk about what Independence Day means, why we celebrate it, and Ember and Ben even knew what the fireworks represented! I want to raise patriotic kids who are proud to be Americans, and appreciate all of the sacrifices that others have made so that they can enjoy the privileges they have. According to some recent conversations, we're doing a pretty good job of that so far.
Our exhausted kiddos tumbled into bed at 10:00 PM saying it was the best 4th of July ever. I agree.
1 comment:
Love these pictures. Thanks Jill!
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