Food, friends, fireworks and finding things

We celebrated the Fourth of July with our good friends, the Reiters. They came over, we grilled hamburgers, I made a festive dessert, the guys took the kids swimming and then we shot off our mini arsenal of fireworks. It wasn't much but it was something.



Actually, our neighbors had way better fireworks so we got to enjoy some good stuff. They had the great big expensive boxes with pictures of bombs and stuff on them. I think I experienced a little bit of fireworks envy. We had some fountains, sparklers and little chickens that pooped fireballs until their heads fell off.

Here's a picture of Leslie and I enjoying ourselves. Check out the cool sky in the background.



And here are some of Mike and Jake and myself. Poor Emma had to go to bed before the fireworks started. I couldn't believe she slept through the entire thing!




Jake was very excited about the idea of fireworks. He changed his mind a little bit once we got started. I think they were just too loud. He didn't want to go inside but he did want the comfort of his good friend Mr. Crab. Too bad we couldn't find him anywhere. We seriously had three people scour the entire house looking for that little guy. We finally found him at the end of the night just as we were putting Jake to bed. Turns out Emma had thrown him in the trashcan. We really have to watch that girl.

The next day, I decided to post some pictures of the Fourth on this blog. Except I could not find our camera anywhere! I looked outside where I knew I had it last. Then I looked in the trashcan to see if Emma had gotten a hold of it. Nothing. Finally, when Mike got home from work we both started looking. I began to think about the last place I remembered having it and that was in my hand while I was picking up discarded fireworks and throwing them away the night before. So I busted a move over to our big trashcan in the garage. Mike was already there pulling our poor little camera from the bottom of the can. Seems as though I just decided to throw everything away. It's a good thing I wasn't holding one of the kids at the time. Meanwhile, Mike was just looking at me with that look he sometimes gets that says "Wow! You are old and crazy." And I'm thinking, "Wow! Now I know where Emma gets it from!"