Independence Day

Leading with your strong points is always good advice. So I’m leading with the best family picture we have had in a while. I love color coordinated holidays!

  

Can I ask for a moment of silence, in my behalf, as we have reached this stage? There never were two more contented partners in crime…

  

He looks all growed up with his hawk and skate shoes and he was lighting off fireworks like a pro. It was apparent that he has begun a life long love affair with all things fire.

  

Food and Sparklers. Life is good.

 

At least she has moved from “fireworks will cost you therapy bills in the future” to “I kind of like them sometimes, but mostly I’m still terrified of them.” Grandma was a champ and sat with her on the porch where they could barely see the occaisional sparkle. Progress!

  

This is us being profound and patriotic. This is CoCo eating a popper. Which is basically the same thing.

I rocked the responsible parent thing this year, and we read the Declaration of Independence out loud to the kids. Honestly, the state of our country and the direction it’s headed makes me want to run away to North Carolina (oh, it’s going to happen) and hide on my perfectly self-sufficient off-the-grid farm (I’ll knit my own clothes, dang it!) and it makes me wonder if we could ever be that great again. I love my country and everything it stands for and was meant to be. Sigh. For now though I can look at my family and situation and feel a deep sense of gratitude for what we have accomplished and the fact that we could not do what we do in any other country in the world. I cried when I read the last sentence of that amazing document and reminded my kids of all those who died and currently fight to give us those freedoms.

 

 

Happy 4th!

Really the only problem I have with blogging, is the fact that everything (especially holidays) are blogged a few days after the fact and that’s if I’m very on top of things, which is usually not the case. Oh well. Was your holiday everything you hoped it would be? Mine was. And it wasn’t. I had a great time, don’t get me wrong, it’s just this holiday (even more than most holidays) brings out the homeschooling mom guilt something fierce. We read the preamble for the Declaration of Independence Monday night for our family night. That was it. No craftiness, no in depth unit study of the Revolution, no memorization or reenactments. But here’s where the guilt happened…I’m totally good with our lack of academic exploitation of this holiday. However, I was feeling the guilt enough to make any homeschooling mother proud, until my 6.87 year old and 3.5 year old stood up, put their hands over their hearts and belted out the National Anthem. They know it and they understand it. It got me to thinking that they know how much their Mom and Dad value and love this country and that’s enough for now. We don’t need to do more if we’ve got that covered. Guilt overcome!

Here is a run down of the highlights.

 

We swam. And by swam I mean “wade in ankle deep pond water while Daddy emptied the pool with a 5 gallon bucket.” Refilling and running the filter might just make the pool swimmable for me again. I say for me, because the rest of my family doesn’t care about silly things like being able to see your feet when you swim.

Grandma hosted the BBQ and we figured since it was so stinking hot, a movie would be nice. “Wreck it Ralph” is one of our current favorites, (go see it!) so we piled on the couch and watched a bit of it. Uncle Ian is our family game master so he and Neil got their geek on and played “Boss Monster,” which is every bit as gamer geek as it sounds. Also the munchkins loved it. Especially Layna, who knows that cards of any sort are meant to be eaten.

 

 

My little pyromaniacs-in-training. My big pyromaniacs teaching the rising generation.

 

This one. Sigh. Little little girl cried, giggled and clapped her way through the fireworks. Mostly cried, and clapped when they would stop. But she loved the “jumping jacks” and ground spinners that made silly noises so the evening wasn’t a total trauma fest. She’ll learn to love them, right?

 

 

Sparklers, ground spinners, and things that launch in the air and make noises…the cheapest stuff we bought…were the favorites far and away. You’d think we would know this now as veteran parents. The fountains were fun, but after 3 minutes you start wondering if this burst is the last one. But they are beautiful, especially the crackling star burst ones. All in all though, it was a nice holiday. I just need to sort out my guilt issues.

Good food, good people, and my husband turned 12 again…that was my favorite part.

Very Serious Business.

My husband is the king of excel spread sheets. He has used them for everything…responsible uses like our budget/ledger and less responsible uses like possible element combinations in a computer game (there were about a billion and I don’t know that I have ever seen a greater waste of time than that game). Last night I knew our discussion of which fireworks to buy today was serious business. My husband had busted out Excel.

We love fireworks. Living in the desert is kind of a downer in that regard…you know, all that flammable brush. All aerial anythings are illegal. But we soldier on, doing what we can to eek out the most awesome Fourth of July experience possible within the confines of our stupid county laws. Sigh. Anyways, spread sheet shopping list and coupons in hand we headed out of the county this morning to buy fireworks.

 

After we shopped (and I chased Miss “I’m two and have my own agenda so back on off Mom!” all over the store) we stopped at a McDonald’s play place to use up some energy before getting back in the car to go pick up our new rabbits (That story is coming soon). See that picture of Garyn? That is some nifty photographic foreshadowing right there.

 

That is Naomi’s scared fairy face. She was a fairy and as we all know fairies are afraid of humans. And who knew that the coolest play place ever was in a tiny town in Nevada?

 

It was a apparently too long a drive (one hour there and one back) out to Pahrump, the home of our closest Phantom store. Little man and Little girl were about to strangle each other on the way home and Little Little girl took the easy way out. But we made it home with our loot and two new additions to the farm!

 

Here is all of the stuff we got. Since we are limited to fountains, we decided to do what we did last time we bought fireworks at an awesome store…we split them between 3 events. I mean, you can only watch so many fountains before they blur together. So this stuff is going to be for this Fourth of July, this New Year’s Eve, and next Fourth of July. I’m so excited!!! And we may or may not have set off some ground flowers. Tonight. Right next to our rabbit run. Because we are responsible adults like that. Oops.

Fourth of July: Fireworks

 

The day started early with poppers. Naomi was not a fan of pulling them herself because we kept correcting how she was holding them, the string was too hard to pull, and the one time she did do it (left) it burned her. So she happily “helped” Daddy pop poppers the rest of the day.

 

I debated stocking up on these because Garyn loved them so much. Just to have them to bring out if he was bored or had done a good job at something (You cleaned your room? Awesome, 5 poppers for you!) But then when my font room looked like this times 10 (right) by the end of the night, I thought better of it.

 

For the most part these guys are buds. It makes me smile really big.

 

I really don’t know why Dads don’t get as much credit for multitasking as Moms do. Little girl loves her some flashy lights.

 

Guess who threw a fit and refused to wear her dress and was adamant about her foot-wear choice? Guess who will be wearing his Fourth of July outfit for the next five days straight if I let him?

 

For the next few years Fourth of July will be easy. A mega pack of poppers and snappers, a few boxes of sparklers and a few fountains will be all my kids want. Then we can sit on the back porch and enjoy the Strip fireworks (we have a perfect view) and our enthusiastic neighbors with their illegal fireworks. We will have to deal with three terrified goats and a cranky rooster, none of whom had any qualms about loudly voicing their dismay at the fireworks. Especially Will…he tried his hardest to assert dominance over the noisy fireworks but lost miserably, poor rooster.

New Year’s Eve

Caution: Events described were highly illegal. Please don’t turn us in. We did fireworks on New Years Eve and here in our corner of the desert that is a big no-no. But we had them left over from 4th of July. And my husband never outgrew playing with fire. And they are pretty.

 

  

 

Sorry all the pictures are dark. It was night-time. right, you knew that. We did do other stuff but mostly it was all eating and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” (is it sacrilege to admit that I don’t love that movie?) and reading “The Hunger Games.” It was fun and laid back and not very picture worthy. Here’s to the New Year! and I can say happy New Year because I am posting about it in Janurary. Barely.