4th of July 2014

The 4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I just love that it's in the middle of summer.  The feeling of still having a lot of summer left is in the air, but we've already been out of school for a while.  It's all about just having fun and eating some of my favorite food.  It's all around just a fantastic holiday!  

This year we were just planning on inviting some people over to our house for a cook-out when my mom asked if we wanted to come over there.  Pool + 4th of July = absolutely!  We stayed at home until after nap and Matt smoked a boston butt for dinner.  After naps we headed over to Gigi's for swimming and eating!

Before the fun got started, I wanted to get some pictures of the kids and (hopefully) a family picture.

First attempt at a family picture.  Fail - haha.

She has been looking so big to me lately.  She has no baby left in her!

Attempt number two - this is the best we were gonna get.

I gave up on the picture idea and it was time to jump in the pool!  Some of our family took that quite literally.  :)

I love how you can just see how much he loves this!

We can't keep this one out of the water!  She has been a fish this summer!!

We all swam for about an hour before we had to get out for dinner time!  We had the best 4th of July dinner - pulled pork sandwiches and potato salad!

After dinner, we headed back outside for even more food.  First up?  Watermelon!  Both kids devoured it.

We had a special treat for the kids: s'mores!  LL has had them a few times before, but Cooper has never had them.  

First taste, here we go...

He was a fan!  I think he ate two all by himself.  Which may or may not be the same amount that Mommy ate, too.

Love this.  :)

Don't mess with my s'more!

Such a sweet honey to roast marshmallows for me.

After watermelon and s'mores, we went to the backyard for "fireworks".  In other words, big sparklers that make noise - haha.  We knew LL would love the fireworks, but didn't really know how Cooper would do.  My mom had these cute pool chairs, so we set the kids up in these.  Daddy was in charge of the fireworks, and I was in charge of taking pictures.  I'm posting a lot of them, but I just *loved* their expressions.  They were so awesome!

Ready to go!  Waiting for Daddy to get started.

Cooper was a little unsure at first…LL not so much - haha.

We took a break to do some sparklers.  The kids were not having any of it!

See?  Nothing huge.

Cooper's face in this one cracked me up.

Lorelai, what sound do the fireworks make?

Daddy was in love with his job.

….and he's over it!

After bed time, Matt and I headed outside to do some sparklers by ourselves.  :)

Here's how our family has changed over the years!

When editing the pictures, I loved how LL was making some of the same faces that she did a few years ago.  You can still just see her.  I love it.

You can see some of our past July 4th here:
2013 (celebrating at Oma and Opa's)
2012 (celebrating at him because we had a newborn!)
2011 (fireworks at Gigi's)
2010 (celebrating with Grammy and Pop)
2009 (our first 4th as parents!)