3 days of the 4th!

It felt like we had 3 4th of July celebrations this year! On July 1, while on vacation (BIG post on that to come), we went to see some fireworks in a nearby town. The kids enjoyed dancing to the band music and watching the show. At first Lucas held his ears, but decided halfway through that it was no longer necessary. Charlotte just sat nicely and watched, not bothered by the noise at all. Every time we asked her if she liked them, she just said, "yeah". Pics of that night will be coming in the vacation post...

On the 3rd, our first day home from vacation, we hit up a few roadside stands and Tony and Lucas had a ball picking out fireworks to do at home. That night, with the help of a few neighbor kids, we had our own show. The kids did sparklers and then we set off fireworks in the street! Afterwards, we took a short walk looking for more amateurs, but had no luck. However, in the distance we could see part of a fireworks show... So, while I put Charlotte to bed, Tony and Lucas sat on the neighbor's roof to watch!
On the real 4th of July, we went out on the boat with Uncle Matt, Beth, and Beth's cousin! First we did some great rafting...
Then headed to Hart Miller Island for the day... Just some chillaxin', swimmin', and frisbee throwin'...
On the way home we stopped for dinner and didn't get to the dock until almost 6:30... Whew! A long day on the water... We had just enough time when we got home to shower and head right back out... A friend of mine from work, who lives in Catonsville, invited us to her house to watch the fireworks. Catonsville is BIG into its 4th of July... parades, contests, etc. all day long. You'd think in teaching there for 8 years, I'd have gone before.... Nope, this was our first time, but it wasn't disappointing. Lucas had a ball running around with the other kids and playing games. Of course, there were more sparklers. That was all fun until Lottie grabbed her lit sparkler with her other hand and burned herself pretty good. I cut her off from sparklers for the remainder of the evening, even though she kept asking, "where my sparkler?" Lottie watched about 2 minutes of fireworks before she was soooo tired that she turned over and promptly went to sleep in my lap!
Between vacation and holiday fun, the poor kids have been up until almost 10 every night for 2 weeks. They were beat and actually slept til 8 Tuesday morning, which is UNHEARD of in our house!