Celebrate Freedom

We had a great fourth of July weekend.  It was a great time to with family and friends to celebrate this great nation we live in.  WARNING...LOTS of photos to follow.  LOL!

While my sister Dawn, Dee and Kirk and mom worked on painting Dawn's front porch and deck I was in charge of getting the kids to some fourth of July festivities.  This meant going to THREE parades.  Yep, you read that right.  Three parades (in two days).

The first one...West Des Moines.  We got there an hour before the parade started, so we had plenty of time to just hang out.  Luckily, the weather was really nice and we had a great shade tree to rest under.

I only had Annie and Hope, since Ally wanted to stay and help paint.  Silly girl!

My first hint that we arrived too early was nobody around waiting for the parade.  :)

Parade #2...Urbandale.  This was the first time I had gone to this parade.  I had always heard it was a really good one, and whoever said that was right.  There were even bands in the parade, which isn't very common around here in the summer time.

Ally joined us for this parade.

Here was the float for our church VBS program coming up in a few weeks.

Another church's VBS theme this year was "Go Bananas for Jesus" so they handed out bananas.  The girls thought this was hilarious.  I LOVE this picture.

Parade #3...Waukee.  I was about done for by the time this parade rolled around, but I hung in there.  Luckily I had adult friends and their kids with me for this one.

Once I got home, I checked out on parenting duty and handed that off to Joe.  :)  After a rest we had some neighborhood fun, food and fireworks!  It was a blast!!!

Here the kids thought the giant snakes were COOL!

This one looks like a scene from Lord of the Flies!

Then as it got darker, the giant "case" of sparklers came out and the kids had fun with those too!

Annie...

Ally...

My friend Kristi and her son Owen came to spend the holiday with us too.

It was a great way to spend the weekend!

Hopefully my technical issues have passed again with my account and we are back to regular posts.  I have a few other events to catch up on too, so there will be some scrambled up posts for a while, if I get to them.  

Since we celebrated America's birthday...here are a few Birthday cards to share.  Enjoy...and until next time.

Darla