4th of July

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. On Saturday, we went to our friends' house for a summer bbq with a bunch of people. The boys always love to play with baby toys - especially if they once belonged to them. On Sunday, we headed downtown for the concert in the park with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. We did this last year, as well, and we had such a great time. It is a neat location (between the capital building and the county building), with great music and fireworks. It was much more crowded this year, but we brought a picnic dinner and arrived a couple of hours early. We found a great spot and the boys had a blast. Last year, Luke was more interested in playing with his Leapster and Ryan loved to dance to the music. This year, Luke had a great time dancing and conducting while Ryan was focused only on the fireworks to come at the end. On Monday, we went to our neighborhood's pool party and then over to Papa and Grandma's house for dinner. The grand finale was setting off our own fireworks in our backyard that evening.


Ryan asked for 2 hours straight when the fireworks would start.



We had a good picnic complete with homemade Sangria for me and Greg and homemade Strawberry Lemonade for the boys. We were facing directly into the sun for awhile so we were glad we had our umbrella with us to hide under - the boys and I played several games of Zingo.

Luke loved the concert - he conducted part of it, cracking the people up nearby.

Fireworks at our house started Monday morning with smoke bombs and other stuff. Greg was lucky he didn't end up as an arsonist - he loves to set things on fire. Ryan was very fascinated with it all.

The evenings festivities included several different kinds of sparklers and a variety of fairly tame fireworks. The boys are really good at keeping their distance and understanding that it is all dangerous if you're not careful.

The boys have also been taking swim lessons this week. They took lessons in March in hopes that we could skip them this summer - but I don't think they were very effective or good lessons. So they are now taking lessons at the pool next to our neighborhood (because our neighborhood hasn't offered lessons at a good time this year) and it is going great. The previous 3 years of lessons has been at one of the recreation centers - but this one seems so much better. The boys are doing great and having a good time. They even got to jump off the diving board yesterday - which they thought was the coolest thing ever.



Ryan was especially proud of himself. He is very cautious and was a little hesitant when his teacher said they were going to the deep end to jump of the "jumping board" (as he calls it) - but he did great and was so thrilled with himself.


We are now looking forward to the arrival of Jacob and Olivia tomorrow - I'm surprised the boys were able to go to sleep tonight, they are so excited.