Fourth of July and Uncle Michael's Visit

E watching the fireworks. He kept reaching for them and babbling about them.

A nice lady took this picture of all of us at the parade

Sneakily eating another tootsie roll.

He loved gripping his little flag. But he didn't wave it once. He stabbed things with it. Does that mean we need to burn it?

Who is that blind-looking woman holding Emerson? I think she's related to that blind man with the sunglasses in all our family vacation pictures. :) (Love you Dad)

As you can tell from both my boys' expressions, the parade was great. :) Actually, Ben wasn't crabby, but he didn't realize I was taking the picture. Emerson WAS crabby.

He also entertained himself by finding his belly-button lots of times. He just figured out that it's always hiding under his shirt.

E was loving life as he got to stand on the ledge and reach his skinny little arm through the holes.

Outside the Columbus Clippers game. We discovered these windows as we were forlornly walking away from the ticket window. And they were FREE.

These pictures are not in the order I wanted them. Grrr. We had a great time with Uncle Michael. We took him to German Village, Graeters, a Clippers game, OSU campus, and of course to the Hilliard parade. Thanks for coming to visit, Michael. I'm still trying to figure out your joke/riddle about how to get out of the house...:)

The Fourth of July was more fun than I thought it would be. I was honestly pretty sad that we weren't going to be in Utah for the fourth, because I love being with my family and I love sharing my birthday with Brad and having two cakes to celebrate. But it was still good in Ohio. We went to the Hilliard parade as I mentioned before, and it was kind of disappointing. There was not one float to be seen. Nor more than 2 pieces of saltwater taffy. They threw Dubble Bubble. Really? Who likes that stuff? I guess at least they threw tootsie rolls and even threw some flavored ones in to mix things up. We were really sick of little league baseball teams by the end of the 1-1/2 hr. parade. But it wouldn't be the fourth without a parade. Then we came home and hung out and let E play in his pool for awhile. Then we invited our nice neighbor and her dad over for a BBQ and had to bring it inside because it started to rain. E was super tired so we put him to bed at his regular time and let him sleep until fireworks and then we got him up when it was time to go. It worked perfectly. He loved the fireworks and was good the whole time and went right back to sleep as soon as we put him in bed without a sound.

I think I get caught up in the festivities of the Fourth of July without thinking about why we're celebrating, but I really am grateful to live in this country. We have so many opportunities and I'm coming to understand more and more how Heavenly Father prepared America for everything that needed to happen to afford us the liberties we enjoy. I'm grateful for all the soldiers who have sacrificed to keep our nation free. I'm grateful that I'm so blessed to live in America.