For someone who loves and adores holidays, parties, planning and decorating, I'm not much of a fan of Fourth of July festivities. Never really have been. Well unless you count my childhood years when mom helped us decorate matching red, white and blue head to toe outfits. The days when I wasn't deathly afraid of lighting fireworks. The days when sitting outside getting bitten by mosquitoes didn't bother me. I guess I'm just getting old. But having a child almost forces you to get your act together for the sake of family traditions. And I'm okay with that. Mainly because it involves cute patriotic outfits for my baby girl. She ended up with four cute choices this year: one from MeMe, one from Nanny, one from Auntie Heather and one from momma. So instead of planning for fireworks and food, I was instead scheming about how I would get my tot in all of these cute outfits. Yes, yes I realize that this is ridiculous and slightly OCD but hey, it's me. So without further ado, here is outfit #1 which she sported on an outting to Walmart with Nanny.....
Of course I can't just ignore the obvious fact that my munchkin has loaded up all the Dora dolls and even strapped one in with a seatbelt. And I also CANNOT possibly ignore what's going on in this picture either.....
Nanny tells me that she may have ruined all future Walmart trips for me. Honestly I don't even mind because I got such a great laugh out of these pictures. She ended up settling for putting all of her stuffed friends back on the shelves in exchange for a sucker (which she was covered in by the time they got back to Nanny's house across town). Tuesday was the first day in quite a while that Hal and Nanny had spent together which made for one HAPPY GIRL when I picked her up. Well, she wasn't so happy about the whole leaving Nanny part but we distracted her with her new Elmo doll and her dino drink.....
Another good source of distraction??? POPSICLES!!!! I have no shame in this by the way.....
After all, those cold fruity treats allowed me to do this to her pretty tootsies.....
We had some visitors Tuesday evening...the Lehman's came to hang out!!! We always love their company but this time Hal even joined in on the enjoyment because she found a playmate in their daughter, Ashtyn.
Earlier that night we did some turtle hunting to get ready for the big turtle race the following morning. Well, I use the term hunting lightly. Ya see, we had been on the lookout for a green machine for a couple of weeks now. Of course all of our usual yard friends decided to go into hiding when they realized the 4th of July was approaching. No turtles in sight. Luckily we had a tip as to where we could find some racers. We picked some up from a nice man here in town and took one to sweet little Hannah Earley. She had some big plans to paint him up spiffy and named him Rainbow Dash. Our poor little guy didn't have a name yet and took a quick trip with Riley to ACE Hardware and suddenly disappeared. I'm still convinced that Riley hid him as to avoid getting up early for turtle races on his day off. He denies this. Lol.
Meet Rainbow Dash and Melmo
It's sad to think what could've been and what potential Melmo had. ;) But if Melmo was anything like Rainbow Dash then he wouldn't have made a good showing. Rumor has it he didn't even move off the start line. Maybe next year we will keep our turtle in a safer location. Turtlenapping is a serious problem in July. ;)
Our firecracker was up and cracking early that morning. I was a bit bummed that I had to work that morning and couldn't take Aunt Lisa up on her offer for a day of swimming and a cookout in Enid. Off to work I went for a few hours while Riley and Hal got dressed and went out to the park. They later got the pouty face from me when I found out they'd gone without me. I asked him what he'd dressed her in (hoping that he put her in one of her patriotic outfits) and his response was a purple dress, pink ballcap and a car show t-shirt. Umm, NOOOOOOO! God, please no. It turns out the bluffer was bluffing and she looked mighty cute in outfit #2 actually.....
To quote a friend...."she's a firecracker 365 days a year."
Since I'd missed out on the park time I was more than ready to get the holiday started once I got home from work. We made last minute plans to go to Nanny and Papa's for a cookout. She had started some homemade ice cream a'churnin' and I helped her get things ready in the kitchen.
Aunt Kylie was busy blowing up the kiddy pool for the girls and Hal was a big help laying in it while she worked.....
Papa was out mowing the yard and Riley was reading the paper with a friend on his lap.....
Hal was munching on "appetizers" and airing out in the nude....
Oh and we can't forget her gorgeous artwork on the windows outside using her new window markers....
Gracie was snoozing on the couch in her funny positions....
Hallie Grace just couldn't resist planting a kiss on Gracie's cute face....
We had a delicious lunch of hamburgers, bacon-wrapped peppercinis, beans, chocolate-covered strawberries, cake and ice cream. Hal joined us at the big people table and made her presence very well-known by being finicky and picky with her eating. But the ice cream and cake brightened her spirits before we had to head home for a nap.
Later that afternoon (after a run to the grocery store to get food for that evening) we went to the park to see if Papa was going to get dunked in the dunk tank. Hal was dolled up in outfit #3 and looking pretty cute walking next to her blue-clad dad....
The park was rather empty (probably due to the heat) and Papa didn't have to get dunked but we did do some playing at the playground with Nanny and Papa. The five of us took a walk around the park and called the ducks.....
She also called Nanny on the other end of this cool speaker toy at the playground...
"NANNY?!"
"I'm here!"
It turns out that it was a bit TOO hot for little girl to be playing outside. But I'll talk about that later....
I hurried around in the kitchen getting our appetizer-style dinner prepared before Nanny and Pap arrived. It may have been more like Super Bowl food than 4th of July food but it sounded good to Riley so it worked for me. A crockpot full of spicy meatballs, a crockpot full of beef queso, pizza rolls, buffalo wings and cheesecake. Approved! We set up a table on the back patio and sat down to dig into the food. There was one slight issue though....our tiny tot had obviously had way too much sun and began to gag at the table. I looked over halfway panicked (thinking she was choking) when all of sudden she threw up all over the table..and all over Nanny...and all over the ground. The poor thing, it scared me pretty good. She'd never been sick before and obviously didn't know what was going on. But after a quick dip in the kiddie pool (which has since been drained and refilled) and some cleaning up she was feeling much better. Mental note: do not let Lil Red play in the heat. We all got a good laugh out of the incident once it was cleaned up and Hal was back to laughing. Since eating wasn't in the cards for her she was our drink retriever for the evening. She would walk back and forth from the cooler until everyone had three drinks a piece. ;)
After I got dinner cleaned up we watched a little of the fireworks over the Hudson River on tv before driving down the road to park at the Senior Center parking lot for fireworks. The view wasn't bad and it gave us plenty of room since we were the only people there. Hallie Grace (in outfit #4) wasn't quite sure what to think of the fireworks show. This was her first time to see the bright colorful loud display. For the life of me I can't recall what we were doing last year on the 4th of July and I'm sure she would've been too little to watch them. I suppose I could look back on the blog for a quick flashback but I'm a bit too lazy to do that at the moment. Anyways, back to the night. Hallie sat in her tiny chair next to Papa, up on the tailgate between Nanny and I and in her car being pushed around in the grass.....
"So what's the big deal?"
When they finished she hollered "more more!!"
Hal and I took a cruise with Nanny and Papa back to our house in the Mustang. By that time the weather was perfect and the night air felt great. All in all it was a very fine 4th of July. I suppose that my patriotism could use some improvement....next year I'll be ready for the 4th!!!! Promise!
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