We had a great 4th of July despite the cloudy, non-summer weather we experienced. We lucked out having the Frank's {some of our Oki family} come for the week. They were on their way back to Okinawa for another three year tour and stopped in Seattle for several days on their way out. We haven't seen them in four years but we picked up right where we left off.
We started the 4th off with a flag ceremony and breakfast at the church. There were even warm cinnamon rolls...yummmm! This was the first year in the history of this long-standing tradition that the breakfast was served inside because of the rainy weather. It was so sad! After breakfast was the bike parade but no one really decorated their bikes so it was just kids riding in circles around the parking lot.
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| Randy was in charge of the flag ceremony. Marcus wasn't thrilled about doing it... |
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| The indoor breakfast |
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| The bike parade |
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| Ethan, ever the goof ball rode around on our pink tricycle we inherited with the house |
The rest of the day was cloudy and quiet. The little kids napped so they could stay up late for the fireworks and I did food prep while Randy took everyone paddle boarding on Pine Lake. We went out for giant root beer floats at Triple XXX, a local 50's diner, and then had a barbecue outside. It was cold enough we had to put on our jackets. So lame!
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| The little boys (all the same age) enjoyed the hot tub. The only kind of swimming they could do on a cold day |
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| Randy's brilliant idea to get root beer floats right before dinner |
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| the dinner - burgers topped with bacon, garlic spread, avocados, and fried onions. Yum! And corn so juicy when Crista took a bite the juice hit me in the face. That's good corn! |
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| The kid table |
At 9pm people started coming over for s'mores and fireworks. We live right by the park where the city sets off fireworks and we'd heard our yard was the perfect place for viewing them but we were nervous. Our yard has a lot of tall trees so we weren't sure how much we'd actually see. We invited about 30 people over so we were relieved when the fireworks started and we were right under them. It was so loud the deck actually shook from the big booms. It was awesome!
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| Setting up the s'mores |
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| The backyard was filled with kids doing sparklers. Somehow no one got burned! |
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| Roasting s'mores and swinging on the rope swing |
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| It's blurry but only in WA do you watch fireworks through the pine trees |
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| Landon and buddies ran around shooting their nerf guns the whole time |
Zack's all time favorite treat is root beer floats. He'll die when he sees those!
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely fun times for Seattle and the 4th of July! Too bad it was a little rainy but as usual you guys made the best of it and had a lot of fun times to remember. Love It!
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