4th Fun

At what point do posts become obsolete and no longer post-worthy? Surely if I'm within the week then I can go ahead and do it. I can't tell you how many pictures I have that would make awesome blog stories but then I don't get around to it before I have something else. I should be happy that I have enough content coming from the two small people in this house. Anyway, the 4th of July came and went and everyone I know did great, timely posts. So proud. Here's mine. Late.

We stayed home most of the day and just relaxed as a family. I saw this magazine article on how to do fireworks in a glass with water, vegetable oil and food coloring. Probably safe to say that I was the most impressed. Mia kept asking "when is it going to splash out of the glass?" Guess fireworks and exploding through the oil are still quite literal images for her. Oh well. I thought it was cool.

   

 

We went out for frozen yogurt with friends and then kept the kids up for fireworks. Before all of that though, we took some pictures. Because that always goes really well.

 My favorite is the bottom left one. Classic. Yes, he's trying to bite her because she had overextended her welcome of arm over the shoulder time.

It was only slightly better than last year's 4th of July pictures.

 

Those still crack me up. Why must this be so hard?....

At least we got one good one.

Finally, no more pictures - bring on the good stuff!

 

  

And sitting on the hood of the car in their pajamas, waiting for the fireworks. No, I did not plan for both of them to wear monkeys riding bikes. I was just looking for something they wouldn't burn up in this crazy heat (today, I saw 108 on a sign...yeah, definitely staying inside this afternoon...)

Finn was less than impressed by the whole thing. But then again, it would take a lot for me to care about something 2 hours after my bedtime too.

 It was a good day. Too bad it fell smack dab in the middle of the week. That kind of made Thursday a little bit of a let-down, but we made the most of it, including a fun trip to story-time at the library.

 

Something Fishy

My friend Melissa and I had a crazy moment and thought this sounded like a good idea:



And while we had our doubts as we loaded the car with the 5 car seats and all the stuff that comes with 5 children 4 and under, the kids were actually pretty good for the 1.5 hour drive to...



Oh yes. Fun at the aquarium. Which by the way is such the perfect summer activity: happy kids, a/c, and no sunburns.

The turtles (probably one of Finn's favorites - although he's a fan of stingrays too).



This struck me as so odd.



All these turtles on the logs. At first I thought it was a sculpture until one of them moved.

The sharks. Always a fun part. Sorry about the picture quality, I didn't use a flash because I was trying to be nice to the sharks. I tend to not want to aggravate those sea creatures.



Glad that glass was there, especially since Finn busted his lip right after this picture was taken and we all know blood isn't a great combo around sharks. Seemed like the best place for him to have a traumatic incident. (He's fine. It was dark and he stepped off a ledge wrong, went down and hurt his lip. Cried for a little but then really cried because I was trying to hold him and not let him get back to the sharks. Typical.)



The shark tunnel. They organize sleepovers in there. How cool would that be to a kid?!?



The shark cage. Mia thought it was a cage for sharks until I explained it was a cage to keep sharks out. Not usually the way it is, huh?



The stingrays.

At one point, Mia was at a fish tank a few feet away and I hear her say, "MOM!! NEMO!!"



Sure enough.

Later at dinner, she told Mark that she saw Nemo. "Lots of them. And then some." (I think she means there were lots of them in one tank and then another tank had some more. It was just cute). On the way there the kids had watched Nemo so it was kind of fun to see them look for fish they had just seen in the movie.

This little guy loved it so much.



I thought he would have a good time, but he really did love all the fish tanks and the variety of looking through the glass and looking over and into the pools.  He was excited and speaking Finnish (ha! get it?) a lot of the time. I did make out Turtle and Fish quite a few times...

And just like that, it was time to come home. We're so glad we did it and can't wait to go back and show Daddy all the fun stuff we saw.