4th Of July

It was the 4th of July breakfast this morning, yay. But things are not the same... I went and did have a bite of pancake and then fed Daniel the rest of my pancakes. No eggs or ham or milk for me. The kids kinda eat whatever is put in front of them, so they ate stuff. Owen liked the chocolate milk.

Sophi's got a smile on her face, her stitches behind the pink bandaid aren't bothering her at all.

The only older kids that made it to the breakfast activities were Joseph and Melodie. Ethan, Hyrum and Wes were all home feeling sick, after spending the night outside at the pavilion guarding the breakfast set up. I ran the fun run with Lily. I took the little boys back home after breakfast and Corey stayed for the festivities. Abi, Lily, and Sophi were in a kazoo band float in the parade!

Then they went to the community carnival, which had a new twist this year: it was all free! Melodie brought her paints and did some face painting for all the little kids. When she got home, she continued her work on her little sisters: Natalie wanted an Ariel on her foot...

And a fairy on her hand...

And a Rapunzel on her other foot!

...and a fairy for Sophi's hand too.

Here was an experiment that Abi volunteered for: turn your nose into the Liberty Bell!

And a fairy for Sophi's hand too. :)

This was another experiment, Wesley's idea I think. The eyes aren't looking in the same direction, so they'll have to try again another time to make it look more realistic. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get Owen to accept this new version of his big brother.

So a funny story... Joseph has been talking a bit of smack with his friends about which of them would get a faster time at the fun run race this morning. Joseph trained a little bit, but he's like me and thinks running hard is kind of a horrible and unnecessary experience. Still he can crank out a good sprint if he needs to. So he was ready to just kill himself for 12 minutes. Unfortunately, the night before the 7 am run, he had volunteered to stay over at the pavillion to keep watch over the breakfast set up and supplies. So he was up late with all his friends. And he was eating ice cream at 1 am. And then they went to bed. Then they woke up when the sprinklers went off where they were sleeping! So then they were awake until 3 and did another grocery store run for some Jarritos drinks, which I had never heard of before. Most of his friends went home sick when the sun came up. Ethan and Hyrum, who were amon the volunteers, came home and slept. Joseph got up and ran the race. He didn't win. He thinks he did great though, considering he was running on no sleep and no good nutrition in his body. Just think of what you could have done with a good night's sleep and a healthy breakfast. Kids...

So Joseph came home after the race and after breakfast and crashed. We had a pretty lazy day, and then went this evening to the Holladay Fireworks with Corey's sister and her girls. Corey went and bought some fries. Natalie had a meltdown at the restaurant's ordering counter cause she wanted cookies.

For how scared Owen is at things (like dogs and my mother) I thought he would probably be a bit startled by the fireworks. But he enjoyed them and was just chillin in Corey's arms.

I guess he just needs his daddy nearby.

Btw, it's hard with my phone camera to take a picture in the dark. I accidentally turned on the flash for a brief second and about blinded everyone around us. So then I had to wait for the fireworks to provide lighting. So I took a video and then did still shots from that. Captured the moment pretty well I guess.

Daniel did great too, not a peep of concern or boredom. See him sitting up and mesmerized by the show?

Cute baby, love my kids

After it was done we headed to the cars. There was a long wait in the parking lot to get home afterward, and these two cars in front of me were about to have road rage in the parking lot, pretty pathetic. Listen, neither of you is getting out of here quickly, just relax! Easy for me to say with Daniel screaming his head off in the back seat? Another car who could hear Daniel through our open window, called to me "Mother!" and I looked, and then he signaled for me to go first ahead of him. That is the right way to get out of a jammed parking lot. Be courteous, let others go first, accept when they let you go first. Don't keep inching your car ahead of the other and risk getting bumped and then honk and swear, that's just really dumb. Thank you to that nice man for letting us go first. Very kind. I like kind people.

ps. 3 Oct 2017: Hyrum would like to submit this correction:
CORRECTION: Ethan and I stayed home that day because of the junk we ate the night before. Wesley was guilty and probably bribed you into posting that the far left kid wasn't him. Well ha! I know that's him, because he told me the kazoo band was way worse than he anticipated, with a bunch of 5-9 yr old kids blowing into these kazoo's as hard as they can, sounding like a class with Ms. Taylor. Ha!
-Hyrum