Memories in the Making: Fourth of July

patriotic NonaJane

This year was the first Fourth of July celebration at Mema and Papa's new house. Mom was very excited to participate in Weatherby Lake's celebratory activities. First on the menu was a 4th of July parade that would come right in front of their house. We decided to stay Wednesday night so that we wouldn't miss the morning parade. We gathered our lawn chairs and parked our cabooses at the end of the drive so we could get an 'up close and personal' view of the parade. It was supposed to start at 9:30... so we waited, and waited and waited. Then about 10:00 we heard the siren blair and the kids were jumping with excitement. When around the corner comes the lead car at a blistering pace of 25 miles per hour! (this is of course an estimate... I do not carry a radar gun). The rest of the parade must have felt the pressure to keep up, and also flew by the house at amazing speeds. Streamers were flying, candy was flung, I'm pretty sure there was waving and some yells "Happy 4th of Julllllllyyyyyyy" as they moved on by. By 10:05 the parade had passed, and goes down in history as the fastest moving parade EVER. On the positive side, the kids still loved it and we all got a really good laugh.

Preparing for the parade...

After the exhaustion that was the parade, we decided to head into Parkville's Fair. A stranger walked up to us and gave us 17 tickets for free! We then paid another $15 for 20 more, and we were set! It really was a gorgeous day, but when you are standing in a crowd on an asphalt lot with no shade... it gets hot. Poor Ethan started to not feel well... so what did we do? We rode a ton of rides and then made the poor kid suffer thru a mexican lunch. So sweet :)

Michael and I

Was the day over?? Nope! We headed out on the pontoon, threw out the lily pad and did some kayaking. Grilled up some turkey burgers, and lean chicken and spinach brats (cause that's how we celebrate in our family) threw some veggies around for good measure, and called it a day. wait... the rest of them loaded BACK up on the boat and headed out for Weatherby Lake's private firework show! I stayed in and put NonaJane to bed. If I recall I ended up watching some of the "honey booboo" marathon on TLC. Anyhoo... the family said the fireworks were AMAZING, so I look forward to joining them next year. But NonaJane had had a looooong day, and so had I. Plus, as I am pretty sure I mentioned last year.. I've never given much of a hoot about fireworks anyhow.

Ethan, clearly not feeling too well, Jack and I (I swear Jack was smiling by the time we got to the bottom... but was clearly not too sure about at the top!)