i also woke up a little grumpy yesterday. it's always hard to be away from family on holidays. also the fourth of july has never really been the same for me after years of going to the lakehouse and having the best fireworks show without having to battle anyone for a view. needless to say, i wasn't optimistic about the day.
but the fourth of july pulled through for me. first of all, the fourth of july marks the beginning of summer weather for seattle and this year appears to be no exception. we were blessed with a beautiful day and the forecast looks good from here on out. second of all, madeleine is her grammy's granddaughter and loves holidays. so it's hard to be too much of a scrooge with her running around so excited about the day.
we started off the morning by playing in the neighborhood with everyone. all of the kids and most of the adults were out and we even walked to the park with a bunch of them, which was fun. i got to get to know a couple of the moms a little better (it seems like mostly the dads come out with the kids in our neighborhood) and the girls were in heaven.
around lunch, everyone seemed to go their separate ways. there are no personal fireworks allowed in kenmore city limits, so there wasn't potential for a neighborhood gathering at night to do fireworks and everyone else had made other plans. i'm okay with that. i hate little fireworks.
in the late afternoon, we all headed out and got some fries (for me) and shakes (for everyone else (some day i'll be able to eat dairy again)) at kidd valley and then drove around scouting out a place to watch the fireworks at night. kenmore has a big show at the north end of the lake and we knew that there would be plenty of fireworks around the lake in general. the problem is, there aren't many spots where you can actually see the lake unless you are actually on the shore (have i mentioned that there are lots of trees here?) and the spots on the shore are extremely crowded. not something we wanted to do with little kiddos.
randy and i were both a little worried about how the night would go. it doesn't get dark until late here and our girls don't do very well when they are tired. but, we decided that we can't always opt out of holiday celebrations because our kids are little and i really didn't want to be sitting at home moping at night, so we braved it anyway. we had found a street earlier in the day that had a great view and hoped that there would be space for us. we didn't want to leave so early that the kids would be dying before we were even close to the fireworks starting, but didn't want to leave so late that we wouldn't get a spot. we left at 9:00 and it ended up being perfect. we got a spot at the top of the hill and right after we got there, it started getting crowded.
you can't do this with a corolla. it was the perfect set up. jonathan fell asleep before the show and was in his carseat and we all snuggled in the back of the van with pillows, quilts, and trader joe's cat cookies.
this was our view. it was great, although we actually ended up getting our and watching the actual fireworks show from outside the van because that shrub on the left blocked us from having a full view. but before the kenmore show started, we could see tons of other fireworks from the comfort of the van.
burrito baby before being put in his carseat.
about half an hour after we got there, a family from our ward actually pulled up right across the street from us, so we got to talk to them for a while and hopped over to their spot to avoid the shrub when the actual show started. it was a win-win situation.
the girls actually didn't love the fireworks. they were kind of loud for them and they were really tired at that point. but i think they still really had fun and will have fun memories from the fourth of july. despite its grumpy beginnings, and even though it wasn't lake cavanaugh, i had a pretty great day too.
1 comment:
Who is that fat baby?
I'm glad it worked out for you. We should have come there for the 4th. Ours was great in the morning, and by night we were in bed watching a movie. Too dry for many fireworks here.We had rain this morning - such a relief after high 90s and dry all last month.
Post a Comment