Happy July 4th!

 We had a nice holiday weekend - I was off work Monday AND Tuesday - can't beat that!  Sunday we celebrated with our friends at the Asher's house and had a nice time.  Jack got his first taste of fireworks, and he was generally pleased.  It's funny we had all kinds of fireworks going off near our house last weekend and he didn't even notice them and even yesterday for the first part of the day/evening he didn't notice them.  Then there was one loud boom that startled the group in the Ashers' garage (and there was some overreacting), so ever since then Jack has been slightly afraid.  Ugh!  We were free-sailing!  I guess it couldn't last forever.  He was still pretty good about them, but he wanted to be in our arms when they were going off and got a look of terror on his face during the loud ones.  And bedtime was pretty rough - we basically had to get him all the way asleep before we put him down because when we put him down awake, inevitably fireworks would go off in the distance and he'd want to be held again.  This holiday is not my favorite at this stage.  :)


How cute are these kids?!?  Nathan Mincher, Reghan Lade, Jack and Addison Asher

All the little legs

 The kids played outside in the garage for a long time and Jack got all hot and sweaty chasing around a ball.  Fun times!  He definitely gets his sweaty genes from Daddy.

 Cheeeeese.

 Playing ball with Steve & Greg

 Is that a look of concentration or what??

On Monday we decided to check out the O'Fallon festival with the Ashers.  There are rides, bands, carnival food and games.  They also had a kids area, which would thought would be great.  When we got there we realized all the bouncy castles and slides were filled with big kids that would have trampled our little ones.  There were also 3 kiddie rides, including a mini choo choo train.  Guess who wanted to ride that??  It was quite a conundrum though, they allowed adults to ride with the kids, but not pregnant adults (Melissa is pregnant too).  Jason was thinking of riding with them, but I honestly don't know if his legs would have fit.  SO, we paid our $4/kid (outrageous, right??) and decided to try just putting the two of them on there.  They did great!  Addi was excited the whole time, and Jack seemed a little unsure at first, but relaxed pretty quickly.  Both were sad when the ride was over.

After that we decided to leave and go to our neighborhood pool instead - it was surprisingly HOT!  We had the whole pool to ourselves, which was great!  

Then we made a pit stop at the Ashers' house on the way home to help them polish off their leftovers from their party the night before.  Jack and Addi had fun running back and forth from kitchen to living room.  Those two have such a great time together! 

Today Jack and I enjoyed my last day off with a trip to the Magic House.  He had fun exploring, as usual.