Let's be honest- the Fourth of July this year was just a long hot mess.  The one saving grace of the day was that Kent got off at ONE! hallelujah.  it was unexpected and it made the day wonderful.

He showed up to the church picnic after most everybody else wussed out.  We stuck around with the die hards and talked miserably in the shade :)

Check out poor little zeb.  all the kids were so red in the face and sweaty.

Ike was happy because of all the sweets.  Such a little sweet tooth.

 Metta finally gave in to sleep in my friend, *cindy's, lap.  Cindy was convinced it's because she's a fellow redhead. She may be on to something. Metta definitely gets along well with reds.

* real question: Does anybody know the grammatical rule for apostrophes in this case? should the possessive apostrophe be placed on 'friend' instead of 'cindy'?  that issue has been plaguing me for YEARS.

 We spent the afternoon and evening with friends doing many 4th of July worthy activities. Slip n slide. pizza. sparklers. fireworks. and ridiculous faces. Check out zeb in the background trying desperately to do a scary face.

 is it weird that one of my favorite things about the 4th is forcing my family to dress in red, white, and blue?!

All I got of me was a foot shot. I scored these at Target clearance the morning of the 4th.

I love them.  If you enlarge them- you can see the little plastic taggy thing on the left.  I have a little bit of o.c.d. and I don't ever take them off clothes/shoes that I buy.  It drives Kent and Zeb CRAZY.   maybe that's why I leave them on.

We've made a tradition (2 years now) of watching fireworks with our friends the Lattas.  They drive up to Indiana and get all sorts of illegal great fireworks- and we watch from a distance.  Zeb and Ethan had a great view from the swingset.

the neighborhood fireworks :)