July 24th

July 24th was kind of a CRAZY DAY!!! In the morning, I left my kids at the house with my mom and headed over to my sister Jill's. Shortly after that Julie came over to my parents and she watched our kids while I helped Jill pack. (that looks kind of funny since I'm used to the Pack being capitalized...)

She was supposed to be moving that day, and packing a truck. The truck never arrived, and when they called the moving company, they realized the company had mistakenly scheduled them for Monday. So, we just finished up all of the packing.

Tim had to work all day since it is only a state holiday. When he got home Julie left to go give Katie a nap, and Tim and the little girls took a nap while Alix watched a movie. I came home in the afternoon, and we got ready for a bbq. Everyone came over that night and we had a farewell party for Jill and Brad's family. We grilled out back, and then went to fireworks together. We had debated taking the little girls, but we decided to take them since it was a goodbye and everyone wanted to go.

We planned where to meet up, and Julie followed us with her kids. They stayed right with us so we ended up parking right together. We got within about 1/2 mile of the park so the walk wasn't too bad, for me at least...

We were on our way to find everyone else, when all of a sudden the police let people out into the street. It quickly became obvious we weren't getting any farther, so we picked a spot right in the middle of the road and spread out our blanket. It ended up being the absolute IDEAL spot.

We were in a big break in the trees, just on the other side of the fence of the baseball park where they were setting the fireworks off. In other words, we were CLOSE.

In fact, the fireworks were RIGHT ABOVE US. (not such a good thing when I got a big chunk of ash in my eye, but at least it had cooled...)

Miriam did get tired of watching the fireworks at one point and decided to lay in the folded stroller. I think that was her favorite part of the night. :)

I know, this is a really blurry picture, but since there was no zoom used, it gives you an idea of how close we really were.

I was actually amazed at how well the girls did. The first few they were a little nervous, but we made a big deal about how cool they were and then they got into the spirit of it...