July 4th

I realized that it has been awhile since I have taken pictures let alone put some on the blog. So I made an effort to take the camera with us to the Independence Day celebration that we went to. They had all sorts of those blow-up bouncy play things, face painting, balloons, food (though we brought our own ribs, salad, drinks, and cupcakes made in ice cream cones...and we were meeting friends who also brought food), a train (really a tractor dressed up to look like a train), and of course fireworks.

The memorable things are that Andy, who normally talks a mile a minute, who will talk your ear off, who talked all through the fireworks show....was struck speechless when we went over to say hi to the firemen who were standing in front of the firetruck. Doug did better with the fireworks then in previous years, probably partially to being a little older but probably also to the fact that they were setting them off a good distance from us (Jo fell asleep). I also predicted it right that Andy was willing an excited to hold a sparkler after brief hesitation and you would have thought we were torturing Doug to try and even suggest handing one to him. Jo just flirted with everyone and tried to follow every dog who walked by.