A Big Fourth of July Day

We has a really big day today celebrating the Fourth of July.  As usual, I tried to get some pictures of the kids in the outfits.

The first event of the day was the neighborhood bike parade.  We all meet at the pool, and then ride around the neighborhood on a route back to the pool, where the kids (and adults if they want to, which I did) get red, white, and blue bomb pops.  I took Hannah and Clara, because Joshua lost his privilege to go because of some decisions he made earlier in the morning.  Later while playing in the back yard, Joshua found a grass spider.  He always asks me if a spider is okay to hold and this one was, so I let him, which made him very happy.

We then had our traditional lunch of hot dogs (it's American!) and also some blueberries, and then we headed over to Mom and Ron's house, where we met up with the rest of the family.  Benjamin and Daniel were there, and Benjamin was excited to play with his cousins.

Here are two really cute pictures of the five cousins from the Leach side.  When we were ready to take pictures, Clara instantly declared that she should be the one to hold Baby Daniel, and we all agreed that she was the right girl for the job.

Clara made the rounds socially, as she tends to do.  Here she has fun with Grandpa Ron and then appears to be having some sort of dramatic conversation with Uncle Brent.

I took a few pictures of the Fouts family, and then we had our celebration of Ron's birthday (today) and Mom's birthday (a week and a half ago).

In the evening our family left to go to fireworks.  The Olathe fireworks show moved this year, as there is new construction where it used to be.  This year we parked at the K-State Olathe campus and walked a short distance to a place we thought would be close to the fireworks.  We weren't exactly sure where they would be shooting them off from, but we ended up with a pretty decent spot.  Next year we'll be able to position ourselves even better now that we know more.  In the picture of us, I'm not sure what's above Hannah's head.  It looks like one of the glow necklaces that's flying through the air.  Maybe someone flung it until the air right before I took this picture?  Yet it doesn't look like anyone did that.  I don't know.

This was an tiring day.  We did so many things and went so many places.  The kids were exhausted and all fell asleep on the way home.  But it was another great Fourth of July celebrating birthdays and our freedom.