The Third & Fourth of July

July came so quickly this year. We usually spend every 4th of July in Portland because it is Elysia's birthday, but this year Ely was at camp. So we actually stayed home.

I wanted to make it special, but LOW key.
I planned a fun patriotic menu and Brent decided to buy some small fireworks. He let the boys each pick out a certain amount of fire works.

In prepping for the 4th Brayden decided to make a watermelon helmet. He got the idea from some comedy videos he had been watching amount watermelons on his head.

Emmett growing so fast. He was loosing his "newborn" baby look so quickly.
He was growing out of his three month outfits before he was even close to three months...

 We took some selfies while we were waiting for the guys to finish their firework shopping...

I started line drying the clothes this summer. It was working out great and saving our energy bills.

So on July 3rd, we had another firepit. We were enjoying our backyard a lot this summer. I was trying to play around with my tripod and the remote to the camera. Also...I was trying to take some pictures of the stars from the backyard.

The morning of the 4th, I spent most of my day in the kitchen. I wanted to make a lot of nice simple finger foods that we could graze on all day. We decided to do a movie marathon and get up and move once it got dark out. Then I made blue cheese cheese burgers with all the fixings.

As it got darker we set up our chairs outside. Brent went and got his parents to join us.
We were able to see the big display up on the butte from our front yard.

Brent monitored as the boys all lit their own fireworks. I have tons of pictures, but I wanted to use a few that captured the night best. It is hard holding a baby and running around with a camera, but I like that it kept me busy. I get nervous with the boys lighting fireworks.

The boys each had these hand held fireworks that shoot out things and spark up. Not far from the roman candle family...but these were all legal fireworks this year.

The boys all cleaned up the street. Using a push broom and buckets of water it was like it never happened.
We had our first successful 4th of July at our house.