Rewind: Happy 4th of July {in photos}

Fireworks Cake I baked for our church's 4th of July Festival!

FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!!

BBQ Chicken cooking all day. Good thing. It was raining most of the day.

Hanging out on the should of a bridge in Downtown Birmingham read to see the show!

With every "boom!" from the sky there was a "wow!" from the little guy

A nice and cozy 4th of July. Just perfect!

Oh, and this is perfect, too! 

Lindsay Letters - In God We Trust Print

That will definitely be going up somewhere in the new house next 4th of July!! Though, I may get the blue version. Either way, it is perfect!

Hope y'all had a great 4th of July!!

4th of July Fun {In Pictures}

Note: If you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen these :) Happy 4th!

 

 

 

 

Welcome July!

I was thinking that July was going to bring out those horrible days of summer where you just want to enjoy the sweet tea and A/C. But, sadly...no. Mr. Weather Man had a better idea. Excessive amount of rain. WHAT?! I swear...it has been raining for a week. And, those percentages just won't quit...

Luckily, we did get in some play time and we even enjoyed fireworks...in OUR backyard. Yep, that is right, y'all. I do believe...I am - gasp! - an official Alabamian. Oh. My. Word (I can say that now. Ha!). Though, I guess I have lived here the longest now and it is just time to let it go... I am no longer - sigh - a Floridian.   ::enter tears::

Eh, I'll get over it. While I figure out a way, want to see our super cool 4th of July fun?! Yeah, you do!!

{MONDAY}

 Library time! And, wow! This was the QUIETEST they have ever been at this place. I'm going to hijack these one day... Kidding. I do need to get to this store though and get a few of these magnetic maze boards. Very cool.

 We ran over to the mall for lunch (Yes, Kristi, we ate Chinese Mall Food!!!!! And, it was awesome!). But even better was finding these super cute football pajamas for my boys!!! Now, they will be ready for the NFL football season (Hey, just because I'm an Alabamian now does NOT mean I will become a college football fan. I'll do that when a college pays for my kid(s) to attend their fine establishment. But, not today...)

{TUESDAY}

 

 Rock painting - why not? We have a million back here. Might as well make them pretty :)
Only, if you have preschoolers...they tend to use ALL of the colors. Which, if you mix all of the colors... Well, then, you get brown. Hmm...We need to work on our coloring mixing a bit more.
 

The best of brothers and the best of friends.

 Crazy hair after a great nap

 Mama's afternoon pick-me-up - a wonderfully good iced coffee :)

 I hate this book... (though it is not NEAR as evil as Fox in Socks) "Where's Waldo? Hollywood" something book. Andrew is AMAZING at this book. How he finds ALL of the people (Waldo, Wenda, the Wizard, Woof's tail - just the tail...ugh - and Odlaw) I have no idea. He is awesome at these books. Can you find Odlaw in this picture? HINT: You will only see his face. Who the heck is Odlaw (black and yellow)? Click here for a reminder.  Good luck. I keep losing him...

{WEDNESDAY}

Cake time! It is that time of the year again to get my cake on. This is now my 3rd year helping our church's Cake Walk at the 4th of July Festival. I make a cake "for" each of my boys. They like to help out with the cake making and they get to choose which one to make. The top one is Alex's - it is a "Lemon-Poppy Seed Doughnut Cake" YUM! The bottom one is Andrew's - a Captain {Chocolate} America! Love it!

{THURSDAY - 4TH OF JULY!!!}

 Ready for today's festivities!!

 4th of July Festival

 Heading home after a fun rest-of-the-day at Kristi's - which...how I didn't get ANY pictures is beyond me. We had so much fun, I guess I never thought of it :/ But, getting fireworks for the 1st time (for me and the boys anyway...it was illegal everywhere else I lived) was something to take a pic of, apparently... LOL!!

As you can see, Jason had so much fun show us newbs the firework fun! He LOVED it!! He turned into quite the pyro within a few moments of the first sparkler! 

 Some pics of our backyard fireworks - we had a blast!! Har-dee-har-har!! :)

{FRIDAY}

 Love Craigslist!! I got this BRAND NEW (with manuals and everything) Graco SnugRide Travel System for $75!!! HELLO! Awesome. They boys love that both of their favorite colors are on Baby Austin's stroller and car seat!

 Make me so happy... Andrew just LOVES Austin already. He kisses my tummy more times than I can count. They both do, but Alex is much to quick to get a good picture...stinker. ;)

Well, that is all for tonight's updates! Tomorrow, I hope to share with you the 2nd portion of "The Shared Bedroom Adventures."  Have a great evening, everyone!

Fantastic Fourth Fun {con't}

If you missed the first 1/2 of the day, click here!

Let's continue taking a look back at the fun we had on the 4th of July!

After nap time, it was time to get our cook out on complete with hot dogs and beans. And, of course, a festive dessert.

Afterwards, we just let them run around and play until it was time to go. They decided they wanted to play a game...on the Wii. What?!

 Andrew has a REAL Wii remote this time. He still doesn't know how to do it exactly (which is fine with me), but he had fun. Alex now has the pretend Wii. I can't find the post about it, but my friend, Rachel, found it while we were out shopping one day at Toys R Us. It is supposed to hold candy. I saw them today while getting diapers there. They only had pink... But they were about $4. 

While they were playing, I got our goodies together for watching the fireworks. I saw this idea on a blog that I read, Just a Girl, and LOVED it! In my goody basket we have, 2 rocket glow sticks ($1 bins at Target - got em 1/2 off), 2 fireworks buckets for treats ($1 bins at Target), pretzels, a thing of mixed nuts, wet ones (always a necessity), and a cooler of ice cold water. We got the guys ready for bed ahead of time so we didn't have to mess with it once we were back home.

 On the way to the Vulcan!

 Enjoying snacks and watching the fireworks!

 SO MUCH FUN!!!

 We hope y'all had a great holiday!!

Fantastic Fourth Fun

We had a TON of fun for the 4th of July - and, we hope y'all did, too! We started a day early with some Star-Spangled Ice Cream Sandwiches! All I did was grab some Fat Boy Mini Jr's and some festive sprinkles! And, voile! Party time! :)

Earlier, we headed to Sonic for lunch and got a fun summertime spinning top. Perfectly decorated in red, white, and blue.

The boys loved the treats, though Andrew was more in to it than Alex. That little guy will eat anything, but hand him ice cream and he could care less. It must be too cold, we guess.

After dinner, we watched Space Dogs. It such a cute movie. It was the story of the first 2 dogs in space, sent up by then-USSR. I thought it was appropriate for this month. Yes, it might have been about the Russian spaces program, but July 20th is the anniversary the first man on the moon sent up by our program - which, sadly, has slowly disappeared... One day we will go back. I really do believe that.

Anyway, the morning of the 4th, we had some blueberry breakfast cake to start the celebration! And, I ran around the kitchen and Target to finish the cakes I baked for our Church's Fourth of July Festival. Last year, I baked just one since Alex was younger and Andrew was "becoming a 2 year old" LOL. this year I got ambitious, then forgot about the 2nd one... But it is all good. Fun things happen at the last minute. Every year, just before the festival, the Church is asked to help out by baking cakes for the cake walk or volunteering in one of the booths. They provided boxed cake mixes and we do the rest. Like I said, I just did the one last year and just did the box mix and canned frosting. But this year, I got, again, ambitious... I didn't take a picture of the first one, but it was a snickerdoodle cake. YUM! The second one was my favorite - my Patriot Cake! Red, white, and blue marble cake with my last-minute-icing-and-decorations-because-I'm-insane-and-forgot-extravaganza. LOL, but for realzzz.

 Isn't is pretty?!

 OMG star-spangled awesomeness!

Time for the festival!

Remember, if you would like to see these pictures a little bit better, just click on them. A new window will appear with a bigger picture :)

 How cute are these guys? 

Collage on the left (starting at top left): Alex chilling; Andrew and Daddy; Andrew walking along the wall waiting for the fun to begin; Andrew says, "Time go!" as soon as he see the bouncy house moving LOL

Collage on the right (starting at top left): Getting a feel for the bouncy house; He got the hang of it!; Andrew and Alex rolling around, Alex the littlest monkey :)

 The really enjoyed this thing! It was great, too, since it was in the shade. Plus, they were the only ones in there for a while.

Once they did decide to come out, we headed over to the games. 

It was getting hotter and we were all getting hungry so instead of staying out in the heat, we decided to grab some lunch somewhere else.

Time to head home for naps and get ready for the rest of the day's festivities!


Click here to see the rest of the day!