4th of July Fun

We stretched out our fourth of July festivities into two days! On Saturday we got up late and went to the parade in Tioga (about ten minutes) and got to see the whole thing. It was a really small parade but they threw lots of candy and fun prizes!
Levi was okay with the parade until one of the fire trucks honked. He had the saddest face I have ever seen and started screaming!







After the parade we walked a few blocks down to main street. They had the big inflatable toys which Emma was too scared to go on. She wanted us to wait 'til all the kids came out so she could go in. :) They also had a small petting zoo that Emma LOVED! There were tons of kids and animals in there...it really was a ZOO! We went into a small store called the Farmer's Daughter and I bought a hat and a couple pairs of earrings. They also had a live band, fresh kettle corn and free lunch. We decided to go to the diner and eat and it took over an hour and a half. They are always short handed which makes for a really long wait when they are that busy.






After we had lunch we headed to Williston which is about an hour from Tioga. They were pretty much done with the day activities so we just went and played at the park. I think this might have been Emma's favorite park of the two days. There were no other kids at the park so she had it all to herself. She was pretending that she was Captain Emma and the playground was her ship. Ivan was a pirate and I decided to be a sea monster. She doesn't usually talk to other kids but when a couple of older girls tried to come on the playground she put her hand on her hip and said "get off our ship right now!" I was shocked and told her that wasn't nice but the girls left anyway. We need to work on her social skills! :) I pushed Levi around in the stroller for a while and I looked over at Emma and Ivan and they were on the swings. Ivan would push Emma and then he would push the empty swing next to her. Apparently Koda wanted to swing too! The weather was perfect all day! It was a little overcast but not too cool.











That night we went to the drag races.





It was really fun but really loud! Levi was not happy about it and I ended up walking around with him most of the night. A couple from our ward joined us with their 3 cute kids. Their baby is two weeks younger than Levi. She fell asleep in her car seat not long after they got there and didn't wake up until the fireworks and even then she just watched and was happy. Levi liked watching the fireworks but still didn't like the noise. We tried putting ear plugs in his ears during the races but he would just pull them out. They did the fireworks that night in the middle of the track. We were on the front row of the bleachers and were about as close as you can get to big fire works. They were fantastic! The races didn't get over until after midnight and then they did the fireworks. We didn't end up getting home until almost 2am. We missed sacrament meeting on Sunday but made it for class. After church I got to have the most fabulous 4 hour nap! Then we had some dinner and headed to Tioga again for fireworks. We thought we would just go find some random spot to sit on our blanket and watch but when we got there it was a big deal. They had people telling you where to park and then they had either golf carts or a tiny John Deere tractor pulling a hay trailer that you could ride on down to the water. They shot off the fireworks just across the reservoir. There was a live band and concessions. It was such a happy surprise! They played a cd of patriotic music through the fireworks and they were pretty amazing.







Emma was soooo tired from the day before that she couldn't keep her eyes open and ended up like this.



We were sad to be away from our families this year but it ended up being really nice just spending time with our little family. Levi was so exhausted from the night before that he fell asleep in his carseat when we were getting ready to leave our house and slept until 10:30 am the next day with the exception of a 6am bottle! He enjoyed the fireworks like this!



We had a very relaxed evening while he slept! He was much easier to be around on Monday. I think that he is teething. He has been really grumpy and slobbery. He has been chomping on everything and has perfected the bitter beer face and raspberries! :) The only place I can feel that is swollen in his mouth are his bottom fangs. Won't that be attractive? Let's hope they go back down and wait awile to make their debut.
Ohhhh and my favorite picture! I laughed so hard when I saw this! ;)