4th of July!

Man, I'm on a roll lately with blogging(hopefully acknowledging it doesn't ruin it)! I have plenty of stuff I can/should blog about from the past couple, well, years really. So please forgive me if I jump around date-wise. I'm going to just post what I feel like rather than impose restrictions on myself ("I have to post in order, I can't post that until I do all these other things first) that serve no purpose other than stress me out.

Quick question while I'm thinking of it, has anyone found a way that works for them to have a "hard copy" of their blog? As long as I'm doing this, I really should have something printed out, but I don't know about using so much colored ink. And I don't know that I'd want to just do it in black & white. Any suggestions?

So anyhow, we had a pretty fun, exhausting 4th of July here at the Morrills' house. We had a bit of a leisurely morning, then were on the go most of the rest of the day!

Our first stop was to buy fireworks. I figured all stands were pretty much the same price, so we might as well go to the one put on by the local high school band. On the way there I looked at an ad for a different stand. Started walking around the band one, noticed the prices were often 3-4x what I'd seen in the ad, so we bought a few little ones and went in search of more bang (literally, ha!) for our buck. We found the one from the ad and got some really good stuff! We usually spend around $100, and I think we did a much better job this year of choosing what to get with that money. We've had too many fountains in years past, this year we made sure we had a good variety.

After a quick stop at home to drop off our fireworks, we headed to Fort Vancouver for their 4th of July celebration. It wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped. They advertised "traditional family fun games and entertainment all day!" and it was a little lacking, but we had a pretty good time nonetheless.

One of the activities was a children's parade! They gave out the necklaces, glasses, headbands, and stickers, and we got to walk in the little parade through the park.

Now, we would have been ready to leave about a half hour before the parade, but stuck around because Katy & Ryan especially wanted to do it. Well, it didn't take long for Ryan to change his mind. Nice, Ryan.

When I took this picture and looked at it on the camera I thought Ryan had decided to be nice and do thumbs up. Then I saw it on the computer and thought he was making fists at me. Then I noticed the headband in his hands. He's still got grumpy face, but at least he isn't making fists at the camera!

Near the end we spotted some inflatable toys off to the side, so I decided that was as good a place as any to quit being in the parade and watch instead. The entire parade consisted of a band, a bunch of kids, a pipe band, some horses, and a bunch of convertibles. Really, it was nice that we got to do the parade thing without it being a major ordeal. We do wish they had thrown candy though. :-) Nathan was really interested in watching the parade, especially the cool shiny cars!

Poor baby boy in a pink & purple stroller. I'm tempted to get a manly one since they're pretty cheap, but just can't justify buying a new one when this one works fine. He doesn't mind (yet)!

After the parade we went to the inflatable toys. Nathan decided he was hungry, so I sat in the shade and fed him while the kids did these over and over again. Despite the expression on David's face, they all loved it!

Even cranky Ryan perked up!

And beautiful Katy was thrilled to get to go so many times!

Baby's hungry, gotta wrap this up. After that we hiked back to the car and headed home. We had some down time, grilled some burgers and hot dogs, watched a bit of a movie, then did fireworks. Fun was had by all. The end.