Happy 4th of July!

We Canadians can’t get enough patriotic celebrations so not only did we celebrate Canada Day on Monday, we also celebrated July 4th with our CA BFF’s and Oregon friends on Wednesday and Thursday.  Well…technically we celebrated the evening of July 3rd and recuperated the day of the 4th.  A party for 70+ people requires a day of recovery! 

One tradition Hannah and I have when we visit Auntie M is that on the days we’re getting over jet lag and awake early, we head to Target.  That hadn’t happened this trip since Hannah had flipped her clock immediately but she was still asking for this special Mommy and Hannah time daily so Wednesday we woke early and headed out shopping for last minute party essentials.  No trip to Target (in the US since sadly Canada stores don’t have snack bars) is complete without a bag of popcorn.  Who cares that it was only 8am?  Not us!

This year M3 switched things up a bit and changed the BBQ into a Desserts and Drinks night and it was still a huge success with much less time needed at the party preparing food.  Besides, we couldn’t ask TubaDad to man the grill for hours on end when it was still well over 90^o at 6:00 at night. 

During the day the girls were a big help preparing the food as well at taking care of the decorations.

Didn’t they do a great job?!!  A quick supper of pizza and we were ready for the fun to begin!

Wela even made sure that Dusty and their dog Tippy were decked out in their patriotic best!

Our girls ready for the guests to arrive.  (L to R:  Hannah, H2, Ree, Ro and S2)

Mmmm…desserts including Wela’s infamous Apricot Dream Bars.  They are absolutely amazing!

Wela (M3’S Mom) and Hannah sharing a sweet moment together.

From the time everyone began to arrive, the playset looked like a variation of this each time I looked over at it.

S2 and Hannah

As dusk rolled around we began to move our entourage out of the house and back yard and took to the street for the walk to the fireworks.

Ready for the show to begin and once again it did not disappoint!

This year when we walked home everyone was hot and thirsty due to the current heat wave so they came in for a refreshing drink – and the after party began!!  All I can say is that my girl can party with the best of them!  She played hard with the other kiddos until the final families left.  Hmm, she doesn’t look very tired to me considering it’s 12:40…AM!!  All I can say is that when I did put her to bed almost an hour after this picture was taken she was asleep within seconds of her head hitting the pillow!

Now, this would be a nice way to end this post but I have to share what happened to me when I went upstairs to bed.  It was late and I was tired.  The door to our bathroom was closed so I opened it, flipped on the light and after recovering from the shock laughed myself silly!!  Guess one of the kiddos thought the horses needed a drink from our bathtub.  LOL – Wish they’d warned me first!  I just about jumped out of my skin when I tiredly flipped on the light and saw THIS!

I was cracking up and went to tell M3 what had happened and she had this impish look in her eyes and a big smile on her face.  Turns out she’d already seen my bathroom guests but asked the kids to leave them there are a surprise for me.  Yup – I sure was surprised!  Heh!  Now that’s a good friend….I think!

Happy 4th of July!