4th of July 2013:
2014: Sorry, Meredith. With you being the third child, we no longer have the time/energy to spend an entire evening decorating a festive wagon for you.
2015:
2016 in Utah:
2017: Note the lack of coordinated outfits/done hair compared to past years (everyone wore dresses they already had that just happened to be blue or red). Yeah, we’re tired. Special holiday outfits and holiday photo shoots are a thing of the distant past at this point. But it might be better this way!
We crashed our our friend, Sheela’s, block party the day before the 4th and the twins must have gone up and down that waterslide a hundred times.
Getting soaked with a game of water balloon hot potato.
Grammy and Grandpa drove from Utah to see our new house for the first time and spend the week of the 4th with us.
The girls loved showing Grammy and Grandpa their favorite neighborhood attractions.
Picnic time while Jake and I were getting some house projects done.
Pass the La Croix, please.
The twins have been obsessed with climbing trees lately.
The girls were excited to swim at Grace’s pool and try out her water slide, although Meredith was such a pain that afternoon and did NOT want to be in the water with us.
Special delivery!
Bandit shows off his swimming skills.
BBQ time.
Mmmm…chicken…
The morning of the 4th, I stayed home and unpacked more boxes while everyone went to the local pancake breakfast and waited for our tiny, but cute, local parade.
Meredith looked liked she grew into a two-year-old overnight! She’s so much bigger at 17 months that the twins were at the same age:
Amelia leads everyone in a rendition of a song they made up in honor of the 4th: “Three cheers for the red, white and blue!” (sung over and over again ad nauseam).
Daddy’s girls.
When will this dumb parade start?
Waiting for the parade in 2014 and 2015:
Please throw candy!
The highlight of the parade:
The twins concluded that, once again, the parade was worth it due to all the candy being thrown to them.
Amelia shows off her spoils in the parade a few years ago:
After the parade, everyone headed back for our own neighborhood block party. We will always cherish the awesome block parties hosted by the Hossfelds in our old neighborhood, but we were also ready to make new 4th of July memories in our new one. Even though we had already met some of the neighbors, this was our first official meet and greet with everyone, and I didn’t see the twins for about three hours, thanks to the waterslide!
Amelia at one of our old neighborhood 4th of July parties:
We’ve finally found the key to being able to hold adult conversations more than five minutes while the kids are completely occupied:
Meredith on the 4th last year:
Juicy watermelon!
Nap time, anyone?
In the evening, we walked down to the carnival, where the twins were in carnival game heaven, and Jake
I promptly took advantage of Meredith being occupied with the shaved ice to walk her home and we were both fast asleep by 8 p.m.! Meanwhile, Jake, Grandpa and the twins hiked up the hill behind our house and stayed up to watch our local fireworks, as well as those from the beach and surrounding cities. I was happy to offload the firework responsibility to someone else and the girls were excited to finally be able to stay up late enough to see them (barely… the following day was rough).
Lots of love,
