*** the fourth ***

As usual, we went up the the cabin for the fourth of July. What was NOT usual, was that there weren't any fireworks due to the fire ban across many parts of the state. We wouldn't want to start any more fires, but it was strange not to have any fireworks to help celebrate our freedom! 

Of course, this would happen to me...on the way up to the cabin my camera battery died. So all of these pictures were taken on Mark's phone. Here are some photos from our fun family day! 

These two cousins were absolutely adorable on their way to the Indian Hills parade! 

Heath LOVES ponies! I snapped his pic next to this one. It was one of the two horses in the parade! There used to be many more horses! This year, it was mostly old cars and firetrucks! 

The boys loved waving their flags! Nolan kept chanting, "AMERICAN, AMERICAN, AMERICAN!" It was pretty funny that he came up with that on his own! 

Catching candy! They sure had fun and caught a lot! 

They also had fun getting squirted with fire hoses and water guns! Here they had just gotten hit with a water balloon! See Oma running away from it in the background! Nolan actually caught a water balloon that didn't pop! He had fun slamming it on the ground and watching it pop! 

After the parade we had a few lazy hours of lounging around outside the cabin, chatting, and watching the kids play.

I was in charge of bringing fruit to the cabin. I had seen this idea on Pinterest. I cut the watermelon into little sun shapes. I was looking for star shape cookie cutter, but didn't have one. So this sun shape was as close as I could get- I still thought it looked pretty patriotic! 

We had a quick and easy lunch, which was nice after a busy week, and a Wednesday holiday, which meant work for Mark the next day. 

After lunch we played the piano and the kids had a dance party! It is so fun to watch them all singing, dancing, and having fun together! They have pretty neat relationships! We hope they will always be this close! 

So since there wasn't going to be any fireworks, we decided to just go up to the cabin for the morning and then come back home for naps in the afternoon, and a little appliance shopping for our new home in the evening. Not quite fireworks, but still fun as we look forward to creating a new place for our family to live in just 1 week.