Smores and Green T-shirts

My parents and sister went to San Francisco this summer while visiting family in California and my mom brought back matching t-shirts for Anna and Evie. 

 For our Fourth of July barbecue, I bought ingredients for smores, thinking we could just wrap them in foil and put them on the grill. I think we had so much sugar though that we didn't really bother to make the smores that night, but a few days later, we thought we'd make some for the girls. Since smores are a sticky mess and because the weather was so nice, we ate them in the backyard.

 Yum!

Evie's all ready to wash off the stickiness.

Fourth of July 2011

Because our front yard has a great view of the nearby fireworks show, we can usually get the rest of my family to come to us on the Fourth of July. This year, as with past years, we grilled up some meat and had plenty of food before heading out to our front lawn to watch the bigger fireworks show. My sister Erica brought some fireworks for the boys to light off and Jamie brought some sparklers for Anna and Evie.

Thanks to the change in laws about fireworks, several of our neighbors also put on some pretty good fireworks shows. Anna is still a little nervous about fireworks because they are so loud, but I bought her some earplugs, and we tried them out when our neighbors had us over a few days before the Fourth for their "Street of Fire" fireworks show. The earplugs were pretty ineffectual, but Anna loves being around other kids, so the our neighbors' show turned out to be a good warm up for the Fourth. Anna didn't want to leave the other kids, so she managed to overcome her anxiety about all the loud noises. 

On the Fourth, Anna and Evie were out in the backyard after dinner when our backyard neighbors started shooting off some arial fireworks. Christa and Shawn stood out on the back porch with the girls and I kept hearing Anna and Evie exclaim "wow!" 

Evie looks like she's running for cover, but I think I just caught her in a funny position. 

It looks like she's had one too many goldfish, but mostly I think she was just really tired.