Happy Belated 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!  Now, I realize it's the 8th of July, but should there be a time limit on when we can celebrate our countries independence?  I think not.  Therefore, here I go.  I had to show the picture above because Grandma Natasha bought she and Ellie matching flag shirts and they looked so cute and I had to put them on display.  Moving on.  As I think about this past 4th of July, Ellie's first, there were so many things I wanted to do, even though they were things I severely dislike. The first was to go to a parade, something I find a complete waste of time and resources, but I have noticed at past parades that children quite enjoy them, so I thought, why not?  We were going to go with our wonderful friends, the Meese's, and their twin boys, but unfortunately one of the boys wasn't feeling well, so it didn't happen.  The other thing I wanted to do, for Ellie, was attend a fire works show.  Now, not only do I find them insanely boring, is there a need for the city to spend thousands of dollars, which could go to something more useful such as, oh I do know, the schools?  Apparently, there is.  But, we also missed that because the weather wasn't good.  But even though we missed these wonderfully patriotic traditions, we still have the 24th of July, also known as Pioneer Day, but I refer to it as "Mormon Christmas."  So, with fingers crossed and hopefully non-sick kids, we will do all those things in 16 days.