4th of July 2012

We started things off with our local parade!  Our good friends Brad and Natalie were nice enough to save us spots right on Main Street and we just walked over together.  This wasn't Max's first 4th of July, but it may as well have been since he was only 11 days old the previous year.  He seemed to enjoy watching all the people and happenings...

 

 Lincoln sure couldn't have been happier about all of the celebrations - he loved it!

Noah - well, he was trying to have fun.  At this point we thought he was being "whiney-Noah" from staying up too late (that's common without enough sleep), but in fact the poor guy was feeling under the weather.

Gabe.

Mark snacking while we wait for the parade to start.  He's a good sport to come, by the way, seeing as he loathes parades.

My brother Matt joined us too.

Brad, Natalie, and Gabe.

Us on our coveted spot of curb.

A lot of the entrants in the parade are simply corporate advertising, but at least some of them throw candy (all the kids care about).  Every now and then there is a random creative person too, like this guy on the surprisingly zippy recliner.  This isn't the best picture, but it wasn't attached to anything - it had it's own motor and was really fast.  Now that's the way to enjoy the parade (does he have a cup-holder?)...

The kids with their plastic bags waiting for candy to come their way...

It was about this time you could see Noah really wasn't feeling good...

A rest in a chair with some cold water (and candy) helped a tiny bit...

Max was pretty content with his goldfish crackers...

And Lincoln took this candy collecting thing extremely seriously...

This next series of 3 photos cracks me up.  Lincoln is excitedly (running up to me) showing me that he found a sucker!  Serious jackpot for him...

 

Mark and Matt.

And finally, Max was out.  Not even the fire engine horns woke that sleeping baby.

Then it was off to more city celebrations nearby.  There were free games, bounce houses, and we even got some pizza and snow cones.  Lincoln was excited about his green snow cone of course!

Noah tried to be excited about a snow cone...

And Max enjoyed our fan that spritzed water...

 Noah and Linc participated in a couple of games to win some prizes...

Here are Lincoln and Brad with their new blow up hammers...

And one family photo before heading home to get out of the heat and take naps!

We joined back up that night for fireworks with Brad, Natalie, and Gabe (and my parents).  No photos of that, but I do have just a couple pictures from two nights before that when our neighborhood had their annual "cul-de-sac of fire"...

Matix with his sparkler.

 Lincoln thrilled with the whole sparkler thing too!