a (pictureless) recap of our Fourth of July

Our holiday was pretty low-key this year. My aunt usually hosts a cook out on the 4th, but this year she was a little too preoccupied with her newly born granddaughter to plan anything. My parents were recovering from my grandparents' 60th anniversary party which was held yesterday. So, my little family spent most of the day by ourselves. We cleaned a little and Chris and the boys cut the grass while I folded a ton of laundry. You remember... the same pile of clean laundry that I was supposed to have folded when I wrote this post. It took me awhile, but I'm happy to report that all of our clean laundry is not only folded, but also put away.

Anyway, we usually go to Dahlonega to catch the fireworks. This year, Chris was on call, so we couldn't risk being that far away from home. My friend Kelli told me that there were fireworks right down the street from us, so we decided to go there. It was kind of overcast all day, and then it began to rain and thunder around 7:00. We met my sister and another friend of ours, plus all of the kids, for dinner. My beef with broccoli was delicious. Chris wasn't too impressed with his sesame chicken. I think the entire restaurant wasn't too pleased with the amount of noise all seven of our kids were making. Oh well. What do you do? They weren't being rude... there's just a lot of them and we were in a small room. The MSG kicked in soon after the boys were finished eating, so we told the others we would meet them for fireworks and high-tailed it out of there.

It was still raining when I left the grocery store a few minutes later, but my sister called and told me that the fireworks were still on, so we headed that way. It was a small community celebration that was put on by a church in the neighborhood. It was really nice. We saw some old friends there who informed us that the event had been going on since 5:00. There had been a softball game and a potluck dinner. I had no idea. We're definitely going to take part next year. The crowd was smaller than we are used to, so the kids had a bit more freedom to run and play. After the fireworks ended, an elderly couple came up to Chris and thanked him for putting on such a good show. We're still a little confused about that. Best of all, there was no parking nightmare. When it was over, we went to our car and were home one minute later. Oh, and Shaun found a firework that had already been shot. He was quite pleased with his find and took it home to start a collection. He plans to add to his collection every year.

We're back at home now. The kids are supposed to be sleeping, but I've heard Jordan's little footsteps in the hallway twice already. Why that boy despises sleep so much is beyond me.