Pics that will make my mom nervous

I think this is a record or something, I don't think I have ever, EVER! posted about a holiday within one day of it happening (last years 4th of July post was 3 weeks late!). If I keep this up people will actually start expecting things from me. Don't worry, I'll be back to my delayed self again by tomorrow. Well anyway, I hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July! As if it needs to be said, but how is it already JULY!?!? I swear all the years of adult life are on fast forward. Sigh.

We have started a family tradition in the past 5 years to just stay home. We used to do this thing in Texas where we'd drive to a parking lot and watch the fireworks show, it was a great show, but it was always stressful, there was tons of traffic and well, sitting in a parking lot with kids is not incredibly fun, especially overly tired kids. However, it was either do that or don't see fireworks (they were illegal), so we did it.

Now we have it pretty good up here. It's legal to set them off in our town and we happen to live across from a couple islands filled with mostly huge houses (aka. people that blow hundreds, maybe even thousands on their own fireworks... thank you for giving us a free show!), plus we can see the scheduled fireworks shows in two towns along the water, we can even see them from the comfort of our bed! I know, we are mega lucky and we don't take that for granted (except when I complain during the winter, let me have a tiny bit of slack for that, okay :P?).

(taken by Addie)

It's so relaxing to just chill on our lawn while watching the fireworks. The girls brought out pillows and blankets and cuddled up to us when it got cold. We grabbed wine, cocktails, water, popcorn and periodically set off our own dinky fireworks whenever the girls got antsy (I had a serious "do not spend a ton of money on things that blow up" talk with Mike before he went to buy them, or else they wouldn't have been so dinky, lol)

Earlier in the day we barbequed steaks, asparagus, mushrooms, corn-on-the-cob and hotdogs (okay, Mike did all the work, but I bought the food, so that counts for something! :D). We also went on a family jog to the local park and we did a scavenger hunt/long walk after dinner. It was 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, so we took full advantage of it. Thank you summer for finally deciding to come to Washington!! I cannot wait for more 75+ degree days (and yes, I realize that the rest of the country is melting with 100+ degree temps, but we were wearing coats on Tuesday, it's still chilly up here! We are desperate for some heat around these parts!).

Ohhh almost forgot. I could not find my tripod anywhere. I had a mini-panic attack (not really, but close) thinking that I'd lost it/left it somewhere (still haven't found it), but instead of letting that ruin my night (uhh hello, fireworks pics only happen once a year!) I reminded myself that nobody except me cares about fireworks pics, and the things I really needed to capture didn't require a tripod. So I shot the kids doing sparklers for about 10 minutes, then I took a few blurry shots of the fireworks (which I've decided to call "bokeh-works" -- basically just focus on something close to you, then recompose your shot while keeping your finger halfway pressed on the shutter and take a pic of the awesome bokeh-y fireworks!) and I put the camera back inside. Yep, I only had my camera out for about 15 minutes and surprisingly, I didn't feel like my left limb was chopped off! It was actually kinda nice to not have any pressure to get a good shot. Maybe I'll do that more often :)

(picture from last year, shows the awesome fireworks across the water from us!)

How did you spend your 4th? Do you go to a big show or just stay at home? Do your kids sleep through the fireworks? 

Ours were crazy wild until about 11pm, then they passed out. The fireworks continued till almost 2am, but nobody woke up...then again my kids could sleep through a train driving through our front yard. Seriously we have hard sleepers over here (everyone except Mike).