4th of July 2013

This post could have had so many other titles. Some examples "the whiniest kids in America celebrate the 4th" or "Bubbles are dangerous" or "Busted by the pediatrician" or "Bug Spray makes Kate nauseous..who knew?" But none of those seemed archive memory friendly so I went with the generic. I will dispense with the complaints and push on to the pictures:)

This has nothing to do with July 4th but it seems like they are a lot of bunnies in our neighborhood. I saw at least 7 on my early morning run the other day. Found this little guy in my yard yesterday morning. He let me get really close before he high tailed it out of there.

Kate setting up our flags. I went with the mini flags this year as we had a our big flag stolen last year. I don't know what kind of person would steal a flag and I'm not sure I want to know. But Carson gave a great explanation "Maybe they just needed a flag Mommy." Note to self to have that conversation with him that just because you NEED something does not mean you can just take it.

My flag waving girl and her new hair cut. This hair cut is a bit shorter than her previous ones and makes her have some wild hairstyles in the morning when she wakes up. It seems like every morning she asks me to get the brush (unheard of!) because "Mommy my hair is  SO crazy this morning!" And just a little a while ago she was telling me that her hair was too big. But really that's just because it falls in her face more and she has to constantly push it behind her ears. Kid's perspectives are so funny. :)

I was envisioning them spread out over the garden. But when you ask a 5 year old to do something like this you should know that you will get everything arranged in one big clump. This arrangement is very reminiscent of the ornaments on our tree last year:)

I had just picked them up from school and we were headed to the July 3rd celebration. But our first stop was to get Kate a patriotic tee.

At first glance you would think this picture is silly and I almost told them to "come on!" when they asked me to take this picture. Then I figured it would be great practice for later in the night when I need the cute brother and sis pic. This theory did not prove to be true.

We just couldn't resist the Hello Kitty patriotic tee. Note: this is outfit #1 for the night.

The boy with a million questions. We took a shuttle to the celebration which brought an onslaught of questions from this little boy. "Mommy will it take us to the fireworks?" "Mommy will it bring us back to our car?" "Mommy why is the bus white?" "Mommy why did the bus start when there were 2 seats left?" And on and on and on...

The great thing about this place (South Lake Town Square) is that you could literally lay your blanket down and then leave and do stuff at the festival. For some reason Kate really wanted to stay with our blanket and got super whiny when we started to leave in search of fun. In retrospect we should have hung out on the blanket a little while and relaxed.

Kate's displeasure with abandoning our blanket is written all over her face. While Carso is striking his best pose. :) Carson is wearing Vintage Old Navy 2011:)

"Downtown" Southlake

This guy was great. But as you can imagine my kids would not go near him much less take a picture with him. The same was true for the clown. Kate wanted us to walk the other way around the block to avoid that poor guy.

Carso checking out the Hum Vee

Finishing off his Smarties....and apparently Kate's also.

Outfit #2. While we were standing in line for the bounce house Kate opened her bubbles and apparently while I looked the other way they some how got all in her eye. She was screaming loudly "my eye! my eye!" Luckily there was a lady right in back of us that worked for an optometrist that helped me pour water into her eye and then proceeded to put eye drops in her eye. They must have been great because Kate calmed down right away. Such a sweet lady!Now bubbles and water were all over Kate's shirt and shorts.  Luckily we could just pop into Crazy Eights and pick up this sweet dress (an another one to!)

Watching the creation of their balloon animals.

This guy was awesome and so fast. :)

A sword (of course) for Carson and a dog (of course) for Kate.

I tried to ward off the noise issue by buying ear plugs. It was a fine idea but it didn't work.

This is the pose she gave me when I asked her to show me her new dress:)

Playing ring around the rosie. By now Kate was saying she smelled "stinky" and wanted to go home right now and take a bath. I had sprayed bug spray on them which apparently sent her sensitive nose into overdrive. I was just praying we would make it to the fireworks.

That beach ball was a God send.

Carson was unaffected by the bug spray and enjoyed running all over the place.

 

She kept asking when the bus was coming to take us home. And then Carson started up. We were just one big whinapalooza by the end of it and watched the end of the fireworks from the shuttle line. By now my nerves were getting frayed and even I was praying for the bus to come which it mercifully did. As we were walking back to our car   I was about to seriously lose it when I heard someone calling out my name. It was the kids pediatrician. I kept chanting in my head "keep it together. keep it together." Because if there's one person you DON'T want to lose it in front of it's your pediatrician.

We managed to get home and Kate took her OFTEN requested bath and all was right in her little world again.  This night was a huge reinforce and reminder to me that things don't usually go as planned. Just roll with it! I have to keep reminding myself of that. It was also good for me to be able to tell the kids "you guys could whine for the rest of your life and I would still love you." Then Carson chimed in from the back seat, " because you love us NO MATTER WHAT! Right mommy?" (I tell them this all of the time) "Right on Carso!"