Happy 4th of July!!

Eric and I are not big fourth of July people. Nothing against America, of course, we’re just not generally into large crowds, or explosives. We’ve skipped the occasion entirely some years past. But we have kids now, and we’ve made a commitment to enjoying everything we can with them, so this year we decided to embrace it.

We kicked of the holiday with the local parade, of course. Met up with our favorite neighbors and watched from the capitol steps.

Watching the 4th of July parade

While we were there, we checked out the capitol itself, including the huge American flag hanging in the rotunda.

Inside the capitol

After the parade, we picked up lunch and spread out by the river to eat. I finally managed to switch the camera to video briefly to capture some of the girls together – something I’ve been meaning to do, but haven’t nearly as much as I’d like to. But here they are (finally!):

The song they’re singing is the nursery rhyme “See Saw Marjorie Daw,” Ruby’s absolute favorite. She loves to sing it and have someone swing her back and forth the way Violet does here.

After lunch we met Hazel and Ellis (and Kristin and Mat) and hit the zoo, where we got to check out the new butterfly exhibit for the first time:

Close up with a butterfly

From the zoo, we stopped at Ann Morrison park to see the sidewalk chalk art while Ruby napped. Once she woke up, we hopped back on our bikes and soon found ourselves at The Ram, so we stopped for dinner. We were all pretty well exhausted by the time we got home, and got the girls bathed and in pjs and bed before it got too late. We roused them again not long after, though, to hike up into the foothills and watch fireworks from on high. Ruby was a hilarious, animated, non-stop yammering mess, but she couldn’t say “WOW” enough in response to what she was watching. Violet, snuggled up under her blanket, was slightly more subdued but just as enthralled with the display. So yeah, at the end of the night we were all up later than we would usually be, but it was more than worth it. Best 4th of July to date!

Watching fireworks from the foothills

Hope everyone else enjoyed it.