The Day We Celebrated Independence Day

, I have always loved celebrating on 4th of July... parades, barbeques, friends, family, fireworks and independence are all things I love so it has always been a day that I have enjoyed and looked forward to... not to mention it is in the summer, so adding in warm weather with my other favorite things always makes for a wonderful day.

Kyle's mom's birthday is also on the 4th of July, so we've had the opportunity to celebrate with everyone in Boise for the past couple of years. It has been so much fun, but this year we made our trip to Boise over Memorial Day weekend, so we decided we would stay put for the holiday weekend and see what Liberty Lake had to offer.

It started out with Kyle surprising us that he had the 3rd of July off from work as well as the 4th. Our little family had a lot of fun being together and managed to get a lot accomplished on our on-going list of projects. Currently we are refinishing the deck, finishing the basement, refinishing some furniture, changing out hardware and light fixtures and I have also gotten on a painting kick again. Even our gas grill was a victim... the last time this happened I painted pretty much anything that would hold still. It's a good thing that my kids are wiggly. By the way, high temperature black spray paint will make a 9 year old grill look brand new!

Since we were in town this year, we decided to partake in a few of the many activities our little town has to offer. The highlights for us included having a picnic lunch at our local park with some friends followed by the Liberty Lake parade.

I have to admit that I was very excited about the parade. As a kid, we always went to a parade in the town my aunt Gay and uncle Doug lived in... they were usually in the parade (along with my cousins Dustin and Jerica) - they got to ride on the fire truck because my uncle is a fireman - it was seriously cool. We watched the magic from below in our carefully placed lawn chairs but I didn't spend much time sitting, I was running around gathering up the candy that the people in the parade threw. They also had fireworks in evening. It was awesome and I looked forward to it every year. So now, fast forward a few decades and here we are again... at a parade with lawn our chairs (carefully placed in advance by Jessica) ready for some fun. The city of Liberty Lake did not disappoint. Even though the parade didn't really provide any of the aforementioned magic for me, it did for the kids and that made it all worth while.

Also noteworthy was the group of festive flag twirling/throwing men... it was hilarious and I am so grateful that Kyle would NEVER participate in something like that. If he was in it, who would sit next to me and openly mock them? Ok, probably anyone would because it was so funny, but I am glad that he would rather observe than be the spectacle. I also liked seeing all the cute grandparents in their festively decorated golf carts riding proudly with their grand kids. There were even Irish dancers but by the time they got to our spot on the parade route they were too tired to really do any Irish dancing... so one of them just stood there and the other two kind of shuffled while they appeared to be fighting off heart failure. I love America!

Our girls had their own part of the action... Katelyn teamed up with her buddies Maya and Eden and other kids from our neighborhood and they were all over the candy. Katelyn would bring her treasures back and place them carefully in the drink holder in her camping chair. As she would quickly head back to get more candy she would usually chortle something about me making sure not to let Brooke take any of her candy. Oops... Brooke was gathering candy too. She was smart enough to realize that fighting for candy in the streets was unnecessary, she outsourced the gathering to her sister (unbeknownst to Katelyn) and would just rifle through the stash in the cup holder and bring me her chosen item to unwrap. Katelyn actually didn't even mind when she discovered what was happening because she was gathering more candy than the cup holder would hold. So everybody won. After the parade we made a patriotic trip to Home Depot and then did more work on our projects while Brooke and Katelyn tried to sleep off the fun from the afternoon. To finish off the evening we watched the fireworks show right from our house. We put Brooke to bed and the three of us climbed up onto the roof for a spectacular view of the show. Katelyn thought that was amazing and when I brought out the neon light sticks to make bracelets and necklaces she thought she was in heaven. It was such a fun day creating new traditions and also gave me a chance to reflect on some fun memories with my mom and dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that I will never forget.