Fourth of July

The Saturday before the fourth we went to one of our local farms to pick raspberries. It rained on and off and the raspberries were picked over, but we still found a good bunch and enjoyed playing.

 Ithaca does their fireworks on the 3rd (not sure why, but I really loved starting off the holiday with the fireworks rather than ending it with them--staying up late the night before you have the day off just makes so much more sense to me). 

We parked at the Farmer's Market and walked over to Stewart Park where we played for awhile and then stood in line at an ice cream stand for way too long to find out that all the ice cream was gone. We got the kids some mediocre ice pops instead and life went on.

While waiting for the sun to set and the fireworks to start we played "emotion selfie." Belén’s faces in these first two where we were just trying to get a good Fourth of July picture are epic.

 Her silly face was also pretty killer.

 This one is of our courageous faces...maybe a little harder to tell than the others...

 Found some friends while we were there.

 Belén’s face during the entire firework show:

 Shae didn't love how loud they were and Belén has told us at least once a day for the past two weeks "Fya wowks wowd" (fireworks loud). 

 Crashed as soon as we got in the car. It was a long evening but I'm so glad we stayed up to do it. Good quality family time right there.

 On the morning of the fourth we made Red, White, and Blue pancakes (we put raspberries, bananas, and blueberries in them :). 

 The kids earned their money the day before the fourth so we thought it would be a good day to go see it since Darin would be home. Oh man, the excitement leading up to the movie! We were all stoked. 

The movie was a little slow for me, but the end was amazing and I loved the overall message of it. Really, you just can't go wrong with Mater and Lightning. Belén now refers to herself as the "Yellow Car" (Cruz Ramirez, aka the new kick butt female car). 

After naps we went to our friend's for a fun BBQ. They are amazing and had so many fun games planned, including kickball, water balloon throwing, and a piñata.

It was such a fun day to spend with family and friends and celebrate our country!

And after keeping our kids up so late two nights in a row, we definitely paid for it on the 5th! Poor guys--cranky and tired, but we took it easy that day and I still think it was all worth it.