4th of July

 We had a fun family 4th of July.  I miss doing things with extended family, but a lot of times it is less stressful and easier doing our own thing.  I had time to do Jenna's hair in the morning, she was willing.  Kaylee had no interest and I ran out of time.

I had asked a friend what their family did for the 4th and she told us where a good spot was to watch the Woodlands parade.  We also followed her suggestion to stop at a Shipley's Donut store and pick up some donuts and kolaches.  This was my first exposure to this popular Texan food.  It is similar to a 'pig-in-a-blanket' but the sausage or ham is completely baked inside a roll.  They were good.  The kids enjoyed their donuts since that is a special treat for us.  

 It was crazy hot at the parade, but we had some shade and they were passing out hand fans that we all used.  We had water and I brought otter pops too which were nice to have.

 There was a clown making balloon animals.  Kaylee got a pig, Jenna a frog (these match their stuffed animals at home), and the boys each got a sword.

 The parade was really long.  They had a few fun things.  This mini train was pretty cool.  They had a number of bands, scouting groups, and business floats.  They also had some people dressed up as the various Disney princesses with their male counter-parts.  I felt bad for most of the people in the parade - it was so hot.

We just took it easy in the afternoon and I think I played a game with Damon and Tyler.  We tried to go swimming in the evening, but the pool ended up being closed because of some thunder.  We actually had tried to go swimming the day before as well, but right as we got there everyone had to get out of the water, again due to thunder.  We were having bad luck at the pool I guess.  For dinner we grilled hamburgers and had corn on the cob, yum.  

At night we got out our fireworks.  A family across the street had some too so it was nice to 'share' each others fireworks.  They had bought some of the big ones that go up in the sky.  They were pretty cool and pretty loud.  

 The girls liked the snaps and Doug had bought some new TNT snaps that were crazy loud and powerful.  We were all surprised when we threw the first ones.

We did some of the normal fountains, smoke bombs, snakes, and sparklers.  The sparklers we had this year were different and weren't as much fun.  We'll have to look for some other ones next year.  As we were finishing up other neighbors were starting theirs.  You could tell a bunch of people have fun buying the bigger types of fireworks.  We were able to see quite a few around the block over the housetops.  After baths we watched out the girls' window and had a pretty good show.  We could hear the booms for about 2 hours straight nearby, it was a lot of fireworks.  It was a fun day.