My New Favorite Holiday

The 4th of July is becoming one of my favorite holidays!  Since it's the one holiday that I am "at home" with the kids, we get to plan all kinds of fun activities and enjoy the time together a bit more.  

We started our celebration a couple days before the 4th by making a fireworks painting using cotton swabs.  Jack did a great job!  Maddy... well, hers ended up looking like a blob of dark paint!

On the 4th, we cut out and decorated star cookies.  I bought a set of star cookie cutters for a bird feeder project and hadn't used them for cookies until now.  Because I didn't have time to make sugar cookies from scratch, I bought a roll of sugar cookie dough and tried to roll it out for cut-out cookies.  It worked great!  And it made a nice small batch!  They tasted just as good, so I will definitely be doing that again the next time we make cookies.

Maddy didn't do much decorating.  I think she ate more M&Ms than anything else.  We started this at about 10:30 in the morning.  Good planning!  We definitely spoiled our lunch.

Last year I took pictures of the kids on the deck, mostly because Maddy had a cute little dress for the 4th.  I wasn't thinking too much about taking pictures this year, but Jack insisted!  He wanted me to be in a picture, so I set the timer for the first one.  Even though I was still sweaty & gross from a workout, I'm glad I took the picture (and posted it!).  I'm in far too few pictures with my kids!

After naps, we headed to the outdoor mall to check out the sales.  We discovered {by accident} a couple years ago that there are a lot of great clothing sales on and around the 4th!  We had some ice cream and then headed home to enjoy the nice weather with some water fun in the backyard.

The water table was a little more Maddy's speed, so Jack enjoyed the slip and slide and Maddy stayed out of his way!

We even bought some fireworks this year!  They were small and inexpensive, but Jack loved it!  Maddy was too tuckered out to stay up for all the fun.  I enjoyed taking pictures of the fireworks and managed a couple of good shots!  So glad that we have the freedom to enjoy all this fun together as a family!