We had a busy but fairly good 4th of July weekend! As a first responder family, we basically know that holiday weekends mean lots of mandatory extra overtime for Theo working fireworks details and covering for understaffing. Holiday are hard for me. I know that it’s just another normal day at home with the kids, but also it feels like everyone else is with family and friends and doing fun things. I’ve learned over the years that I cannot sit at home and pout- I’ve got to go out with the kids and have some fun, even though we would probably enjoy it even more if Theo was there!
On Saturday I decided to take the kids to the public “beach” that is near our new house. We haven’t been before, and I’ve heard mixed reviews- it is a lake so it’s not exactly sparkling clean water, and it is a public beach, so you never really know what you are gonna get. But the kids LOVED it. I couldn’t get them out of the water! It wasn’t too crowded when we got there, but as the afternoon went on, it got really packed.
The biggest downside to moving to the country is that we now don’t have anywhere to walk or run. Despite being in the country, our road is still fairly busy with no sidewalks or shoulder. But we have discovered that one loop around the back field adds up to about half a mile! We love our evening “walks”.
On Sunday, we went to church before Theo headed off to work and I brought the kids home to eat some leftovers for lunch. The kids played all afternoon, and then it was time to go to the local town parade! It was a good parade, although it seemed to have mostly random political candidates and was fairly short. I give it a solid 6/10. Maybe a bonus point because it’s a small town.
This was my incredibly funny moment of getting TO the parade. HAHAHA.
After the parade, I heard that there was a festival at a nearby park. When I entered the address in the GPS, it said it was about 1 mile away. Ok, I figured it would take us awhile, but we had nothing else to do that day, so we might as well. We walked the 1 mile to the park entrance only to find it was the WRONG entrance. There was no way to just walk across the park, so we had to go almost all the way back to where we started, then make our way to the van (without the help of our “shuttle”). Oh, and did I mention that Kiah’s shoe kept breaking every five feet? So I took off my shoe and gave it to him, then walked all of this half barefoot?! HA. People must have literally thought I was crazy. If the cement got really hot, I would put Kiah’s shoe on my foot and walk like that. Hysterical.
After walking two miles, we were dying. The kids were such troopers, because by that time even I was tired and complainy! Oh, and it turns out…the festival was actually right across from where we had parked our van. So if I had just walked to the van, we would have gotten to the festival.
And after all that, the festival was a non-event. There were two bouncy houses, a petting zoo, a shaved ice truck and one food truck. Well, at least we made some memories!!!
Monday was the actual 4th of July, and when I woke up in the morning I realized that there was another local parade nearby so we packed up and headed to that one! This was a HUGE parade, and lasted for 1.5 hours. It was so, so fun, but we were also sitting in the sun and the kids got bored after an hour.
We once again decided to head to the festival, and just as we got there, the parade finished and it was like one thousand people funneled onto this one street. It was SO crowded. People kept saying hi to me and I was like “I’m just focusing on keeping all my kids with me”. Ha.
It was hot and crowded and while I wanted to just keep going, I knew I was already pushing the limit with the kids, especially since we had to walk at least a mile back to our car. So we called it a day and stopped to get some ice cream before walking back. Again, the kids did so well and worked really hard to not complain.
Once we got home from the parade and festivities, we had a late lunch and then filled up our pool and spent the afternoon playing outside! We have almost hit our 500 hours outside mark and I’m thrilled! I didn’t think we were going to make it to 1000 but now I’m wondering if we actually will!
We wished Theo could have been home to participate in all of the 4th of July fun. I was brave enough to take them to the parades and festivals, but staying up late for fireworks was beyond me, so we didn’t get to do any of that this year. Each year my kids are bigger and even more fun and they can do a little bit more, so maybe next year will be the year I can brave fireworks solo!