4th of July

As I mentioned before, we live in a town where there is a huge festival around the 4th of July.  This makes getting around our town challenging to say the least.

We spent the morning of the 4th checking out a new beach close to our house and just hanging around.  After lunch and nap, we drove out to a local lighthouse.  Our intention was to hike through the woods, but we ended up playing on the shore in the rocks and the muck.  Carder even took off his shoes and waded in with us.

 

 

We had thought we would head downtown to have a beer at a local open air restaurant and then to watch a parade.  We fought the crowds on our bicycles to get to the restaurant and when we got there Carder wanted NOTHING to do with any of our plans.  He refused to eat dinner and didn't want to sit still for us to have dinner or our (much deserved after battling the crowds to get there) beer.  With about 30 minutes to go before the parade was scheduled to start, we decided that perhaps and event which required Carder sitting still was not going to happen.  We asked if he wanted to stay and see fire trucks and police cars and floats or if he wanted to go home and he decided he wanted to go home.

 

So, back through the parade crowd we went.

 

Once home, Carder played with the our next door neighbor's friends child (A) for a long time.  And then he ate his dinner, took a bath, and went to bed.

 

We listened to the booms of firecrackers being set off by our neighbors and patted Carder back to sleep a couple of times when he woke up from the noise.  Once it was dark, Derek and I settled in at the front window to watch the real fireworks that are shot off over the bay downtown (which we can see most of from our house).  As we listened to the child next door ooh and aah over the first few explosions, I looked at Derek and said "Does hearing A next door make you want to wake Carder up?"

 

So, we went in and gently woke Carder up.  We brought him out and he sat in my lap at the front window covered in a blanket and watched his first fireworks show.  We did try to walk next door to watch the show with our neighbors, but A had fallen and hit his head and was crying and I think it upset Carder a little bit.  A was fine, though, and kept coming over during the show to say Hi to Carder through our window.

 

Carder loved the fireworks and has talked about how loud they were and the shape of them for days.  There are more fireworks on the closing day of the festival, so we may have to wake him up for those, as well!