4th of July

We had a great 4th of July! In the morning we took the kids to a giant outdoor playground. It was multi-level and there was a ton of slides and things. We came home for lunch and then Jen and I took Avery and Allison shopping while the boys stayed home to watch movies and play games. We went to an outdoor mall by their house (like Gateway) and that is where we got Avery's ears pierced. Al has been talking about doing it for a while and I knew that it would be something that Jen would love to be involved in, so we decided to do it there. After that we shopped around for a while and then came home so Avery could have a nap.

Jen and I made a big BBQ dinner for everybody that night and the kids played outside again. Avery loved driving around in the little John Deere jeep. One of the neighbors has a car as well and so there were two little cars zipping up and down the street. The guys watched carefully to make sure no big cars came by.

The fireworks were a lot of fun. We got together with a lot of the neighbors and Derek put on a firework show. Avery didn't like the noisy, screechy ones so much and she cried. Al had to take her inside and then it took a bunch of coaxing from us to get her to come back out. But when she came back out she was fine and she loved the 'sparkly' fountain ones.

We put the kids to bed pretty late, after all of the fireworks were done, and then we stayed up and played games again.