We have had such a wonderful 4th of July week! I told Theo that I think the 4th might be my favorite holiday. I’m honestly not an extremely patriotic person- I spent my entire 18 growing up years not living in the USA, and for a long time I really struggled to see anything good in my home country. I resented the materialism and the individualistic culture and I still grapple with some of those things today, although I have also learned to appreciate my country much more than I used to. Complicated feelings all around, I know. But the 4th of July (to me) is just such a perfect time for a FUN holiday. I love the weather, I love parades, I love fireworks, I love cookouts and camping and grilling out and all of those things that are associated with the 4th of July. And this year…..THEO WAS OFF WORK! Theo is rarely off work on a holiday and so when he is home, we enjoy every single second of it.
We kicked off the holiday week with a VERY busy Monday. Mondays are typically my errand days, and I try to run all of my errands. We delivered eggs, made a quick stop at the library, then hit up the dollar store and finally a stop at Aldi for the groceries. The thing that takes the absolute longest with all these stops is waiting for everyone to get buckled back up in the car.
After our crazy morning of errands, we got home and got some lunch, then I spent time cleaning the house and getting ready to head out to our local small town parade! My Mom came over and we drove downtown to meet up with some friends at the parade. This is a very small town parade, and this year the parade was about 25 minutes long – haha. Pretty sure there were as many 4H floats as anything else.
The kids took a cooler with our homemade Mulberry Lemonade popsicles and sold a bunch of them. I think they made about $12 š We had 9 kids under 9 and they all got tons of candy. Parades are SO FUN with kids!
At the very end of the parade it started to downpour! We didn’t mind so much because it felt good, but the marching bands were struggling to keep their instruments dry – yikes!
We headed home after the parade and Theo got home around the same time as us. We decided we wanted to go ahead and get the fireworks situation over with at the beginning of the “weekend” (Theo’s weekend is in the middle of the week) instead of trying to do it later in the week. Fireworks with small children basically means that equilibrium of life will be off for about 3 days haha. It was basically 2.5 hours of trying to entertain ourselves and then 30 minutes of a wonderful fireworks show. Not the best I’ve ever been to, but it was great for our little small town! We got home at 11pm- a full 3 hours after my kids bedtimes. And did anyone sleep in the next day? NOPE! Not at all.
I woke up early on the 4th and went for a 5k run with some new friends! I’ve honestly never run with people- I was for sure the slowest of the bunch, but I didn’t stop to walk, so I’ll take it!
When I got home, everyone was already up and a little out of sorts from the lack of sleep :/ But we decided to head to parade #2 and boy was this one BIG! It was 1.5 hours long and it was also SO HOT. The kids brought more popsicles and sold out in about 10 minutes before the parade had even started.
I took basically zero pictures at the parade because I realized that I have a million parade pictures from years past and have never even looked at them. And I was also slightly mortified by the lady in front of us at the fireworks who took a video of the ENTIRE fireworks show. 30+ minutes. Maybe she really loves fireworks, but I’m guessing that no one will ever view that video. Observing that kind of made me want to throw my phone into a lake. I want to be more present in the moment and not halfway present through my phone screen.
P.S. Absolutely nobody on the internet wants to watch the video you took of a fireworks show. No one.
After the parade we headed home and had lunch, a short rest time and then kicked our butts into gear to clean the house, mow the lawn and prep for the 15 people we had coming over that afternoon. It was a HOT day and we typically don’t use air conditioning so I was worried our guests would complain, but they were gracious about it and I think overall everyone had fun! I didn’t take hardly any pictures oops!
Wednesday morning we woke up and needed a slower day at home. We went mini golfing in the late morning with my parents and then just spent the rest of the day slowly catching up on chores, resting and just being together with nowhere to go.
And that wrapped up ur 4th of July fun! It’s so hard to believe that summer is well over halfway done. I have my teacher training on August 1st this year, even though we don’t officially start school until the 22, so it feels like once July is done, summer is over! I’m so sad, but also grateful for all of these fun moments and memories that we are making along the way.