July 4 Roundup

Another year, another ridiculously awesome July 4th :)

We had a jam-packed holiday, which is just the way I like it! July 4th is definitely my favorite holiday so I like to soak up as many of the fun traditions as I can! Since we had so much fun and thus so many pictures, this will be a roundup post!

July 4 Projects
We did a few July 4th-themed projects the week of the holiday. Since both girls love fireworks, most of our projects were firework crafts. Two were hugely popular and one was a complete flop (glue is less effective when working with pipe cleaners). The two popular ones involved making firework pictures with colored rice and stamping fireworks with toilet paper tubes and colored shaving cream. The colored rice was a big hit - we've since done a few more projects with it. I don't know why I haven't made colored rice before! It was super easy and the girls seriously played with it for hours. They made all kinds of pictures with it, used their fingers to write and draw in it and then got out some toy cars to drive around in it. It's now one of their top requests. The shaving cream was fun too! After they stamped their fireworks, they used it as bathtub paint, which is always fun! We also made our own flags with red crepe paper, blue construction paper and cotton balls. We hung these in the house for a few days and then took them with us to the parades!

Our rice fireworks

Firework stamps

Say cheese!

Library Parade
The library hosted a children's parade on Thursday, which was a lot of fun! There were about 100 parents and kids there, and we were escorted by two fire trucks, a police car and a couple police motorcycles. We marched about 100 feet from the library to City Hall and then the mayor came down to talk to the kids! Both girls thought it was a lot of fun!

Ready with their flags!

March 2 3 4 

Miss Nettie, the children's librarian. We love her!!!

Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite. He was really cute with the kids and talked about how important freedom is!

 

Cordova Parade
On July 4, we found a little community parade about 30 minutes away that we went to in the morning! It was pretty small (and mostly political candidates), but it was still fun to get out and do something in the community! They started with a flag ceremony, which was a nice reminder of what the holiday is really about. Then we watched the parade and the girls loaded up on all the candy thrown their way!

July 4th outfits from Nana!

This little guy was in the parade but Madison got to pet him before it started. McKinley didn't want anything to do with him!

Seriously, are these girls cute or what?!

Ready for the parade!

They accumulated quite the candy stash!

Madison loved these horses!

The Main Event - BBQ Swim Party and Redbirds Game!!
Our tradition the three years we've been here has been to go to the Redbirds game on July 4. We love going anyway, and the fireworks are awesome!! Plus it's nice to already have a seat and not have to jockey for position. Our friends, the Rosses, host a BBQ Pool party every year too so we went there first and then headed to the game with several friends. It was seriously so fun!! However, I had the thought as we were coming home that we've done this the last three years but we have NO IDEA where we'll be or what we'll be doing next year for July 4! Kind of cool and scary all at the same time :)

Madison's hairdo

All done swimming and ready to eat some BBQ and head to the game!

Me and my big girl!!

 Me and my little girl!! (She loves to pretend to take pictures with my phone like she sees Daddy do now that he has a smart phone)

 Our best family shot

Of course, Baby had to come with us and needed to borrow McKinley's sunglasses for a while

Sisters

Another cell phone photo op

And now she's talking to who knows who

She's seriously so attached to Baby, much more so than I ever remember Madison being attached to anything. I think it's very cute!

The girls spent most of the game playing with the Walker kids. At one point, Jordan and I were joking that it was kind of like we were on a date!

Anyone want some grapes?!

The sign of a great day!!