Happy belated 4th of July!!! This felt like an extra long holiday weekend- I guess because it actually was. It was so nice having the holiday fall on a Sunday- both Ivan and I had off then on Monday in observance of the holiday.
(This is always a pet peeve of mine, especially with holidays that traditionally are celebrated “late” at night, like the 4th of July….who the heck then wants to get up on the 5th and go to work at 8 am?! I feel like all holidays should include the following day off as well. 😁)
My parents came on Friday and stayed for the whole weekend, and while in terms of festivities, we really kept it pretty low key, it still felt sort of like a flurry of lots of activity! It was great though.
I will spare you a 2,500 word post recapping everything we did, so I’m going to rely mostly on photos I think instead to hit the highlights. 🙂
SATURDAY was kind of a “working” day. My dad was helping with our garage project doing some electrical work for us, Ivan and his brother had a soccer game and my mom was helping me with some misc. projects around the yard. Our big ash tree is coming down soon, so I started working to move/ transplant some of these hostas from around the tree base.
It was HOT and it was a lot more work than it looked like to dig those out!! I made some progress but then called it quits and will finish another day.
SATURDAY NIGHT we had a bonfire! Ivan’s sister and brother stopped by too.
I built the fire. I may have gotten slightly carried away initially, lol!! It was nice, strong fire. 😉
My mom enjoying a moment of peace before everyone else came outside 🙂
Our neighbors shot off a ton of fireworks!! They were huge! We had a pretty good view right from our backyard at the bonfire. The boys were running all over to see various fireworks being shot off around the neighborhood.
The extent of our fireworks were some sparklers around the fire:
SUNDAY morning (the 4th of July) was a gorgeous summer morning- hot and sunny. Absolutely perfect “4th of July” feeling weather. We headed over to the marsh near our house for a little walk with my parents. They had never been there and I’ve always wanted to show them the nice little trail.
The rest of the day was pretty low key. Ivan actually had another (very hot) soccer game, but the rest of us stayed home and just mostly prepped food and stuff for our 4th of July dinner.
I made my version of shrimp cocktail/ceviche:
The rest of our menu was just hamburgers, hot dogs, sweet corn, chips, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries and some raspberry bars.
Asher and I threw together a little duet on the piano/ snare drum of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, which was fun. That was our first time ever attempting a piano/ drum duet. 🙂
The boys played quite a bit of badminton over the course of the weekend too.
We decided not to go to any local parades. It was just HOT and we have done that so many other years that we were okay sitting it out this year. We were even kind of lazy in terms of fireworks viewing…some surrounding communities I think have better fireworks, but we just opted for a local little show. They were nice- nothing to really write home about, but I still enjoyed them! 🙂
I think the nicest part was just hanging out for an hour waiting for them to start. It was such a beautiful, warm evening. We watched them from the high school parking lot and we had a great, comfortable spot on a curb with room to spread out.
The boys “decorated” this tree near us with glowsticks, haha! It was entertaining. Asher attempted to make a jump rope out of glow sticks, too. His results were…mediocre. 😉
I love these pictures of Ethan with his United States map t-shirt on. (He of course had to sneak in a little reading as we waited for fireworks.)
We hot tubbed it every night before bed which was so nice too. Lots of fireworks being shot off and stuff around the area made it feel very festive. 🙂
MONDAY we still had off. My parents left in the afternoon but then we had Ivan’s cousin + his aunt/uncle (who are here visiting from Mexico currently) over for a cookout Monday night. Which meant more prepping food, cleaning up the house, etc. 🙂 It was a lot of fun, though!
We made some blueberry bars this time for dessert. People gobbled them up! (served with vanilla ice cream)
The kids did some more sparklers.
It got to be a late night (at least 10:30-11 pm?) before they left, so I’m not super thrilled about jumping into work now this morning. But, I will anyway, because….I guess the weekend is finally over. 🙂
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for good holiday weather! (Actually was probably slightly too hot, but definitely great summertime weather.)
GRATEFUL KAE 
Yum, those bars at the end look especially good to me! Sounds like a busy but productive weekend! We were inside more than I would like but it’s been so dang hot and is too hot for our little guys to be outside. Paul gets beat red when it’s so hot out and I can’t tell if he’s dehydrated or getting a sun burn or what. I put sunscreen on him but always get nervous it has faded or something so the red face stresses me out! So we just stay inside when it’s over 90. So we made the most of our mornings! The highlight of the weekend was taking Paul to a really cool pool that is about 10 minutes away. It’s not cheap – $11.50/person and we could only stay for 2.5 hours since I had to get home to feed Will who was refusing a bottle from Phil. But in a couple of years I could see getting a season pass for this place. The kids area is so awesome and the pool in general is huge – diving boards, a zip line, water slides and this surf area. Our kids are too young for most of the stuff but as they get older, they’ll love it more and more I bet (or I hope – need Paul to get over his water fear first!). I also went for a walk with a friend at 7:30 on Sat. I’m glad she was up for an early walk as it was more comfortable at that time of day. She had morning plans so was happy to walk early. 7:30 isn’t even really ‘early’ for us these days, though!
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looks like a fun weekend, full of family time, play and good food.
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What a fun weekend. I am such a party pooper though. I like to get to bed early as I wake up at 4am no matter what time I go to bed and unfortunately one of my neighbors (who is selling their house … thank the lord) likes to host big pool parties and they seemed to think that friday, saturday, and sunday night were free for all nights to party and shoot off fireworks. I think they had them going off until midnight everynight and even with my AC, FAN, windows & doors closed, and my sound machine running I could hear them. I was exhausted come monday and mid morning I came to find I had a fever and quickly put myself back to bed in the mid afternoon because I just finished redecorating my bedroom this weekend and it felt so cozy to snuggle into my fresh bedding. I slept for 5 hours and started to feel better. So while I am all for celebrating only do so until 10 or 11 because some people need to sleep. Do you guys have much planned for the month of july? June seemed quite busy so I am sure July will be much the same! 🙂
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I am not much for late nights anymore, either! My husband’s family in Mexico will have big family parties when we go there to visit that go late into the night, everyone laughing and talking, playing music.. and then I always head up to bed by like 11 pm. Hahaha! I can’t help it- sometimes they stay down there until like 3 in the morning! No way. Haha.
We have a fairly busy July coming up too! Not as busy as June though. But Ethan’s birthday is next week and then at the end of the month I’ll have to be out of town all weekend for Asher’s state swim meet.
And sleeping in fresh bedding is the best!
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What day is Ethan’s Birthday? My birthday is next week too! It would be so unique if we happened to share the same birthday!
How in the world do people stay awake until 3 in the morning? I become quite grouchy if I am awake past 10:30pm. lol!
Best of luck to Asher at his swim meet. Do you guys ever head to Minnesota for Swim Meets?? I know there are quite a few competitive swim teams here in the Twin Cities.
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