Lessons in physics

Our Fourth was pretty simple and we stayed at home. We watched a movie and played on the Wii when we came home from eating at grandpa's. We really enjoyed celebrating with him a bit. The kids just love being with him and their excitement is contagious. He went to the Kelly house to spend some time with Evelyn and avoid all the noise, heat and confusion.

We did not eat elaborately, but we enjoyed making and eating grilled hamburgers, squash, chips, watermelon and homemade chocolate chip cookies and popsicles while sitting outside listening to the neighbors make our subdivision sound like it was under direct artillery fire... The kids loved every boom!

Poppers, sparklers and just a few little fountains were the extent of our pyrotechnics this 4th, but our neighbors were very kind to share their fun and put on a huge light up, boom, boom pow show! It never ceases to amaze me how large the displays are, in the city limits no less!

Confetti is much more fun when you can shoot it onto something and Sera seemed to be a bit confused as to how to aim, at first, but after a few shots, she was decorating our garden right along with her siblings. Our tomato plant became our Fourth of July "tree"..... They were quite proud of it!

Aubri did a wonderful job lighting our little fountains, but the wind defintely posed some challenges. She figured out how to compensate though! The sparklers were blown out almost as soon as they were lit, but they all figured out how to put their backs to the wind! Motivational learning!!!

The wind added other concerns, however, because it would seem that some of our neighbors were not compensating nearly as well as Aubri had and the large, sky high, spark shows were blown into our house several times. Good thing we had just had a good rain! I was a bit nervous and kept my cell phone handy and the kids under the trees when the big shows were going on.

Then the kids had a blast in our new hammock while we watched the neighbors parties. I had told them I would buy it, rather than a bunch of fireworks, because it would not blow up and I knew our neighbors would entertain us :-) They had so much fun trying to get all 3 of them on it at once! Once they managed to get up there calmly and stay on for a few minutes, of course the wiggles and goofies got to them and they would spill out! When they got to bed, they were BEAT! They slept soundly through the remaining explosions, which lasted well past 2 am..... Mom is not so well rested today :-) 'Good thing the fourth fell on a Saturday!!

BTW, The dogs were very happy to snuggle and cuddle with us all today. They are very glad there are 365 more days until this happens again! BaoBao was the only one who did not hide and thought it was no big deal !

It is always nice to celebrate Independence Day with my kids. After being stuck in Ch*nese police stations and having seen someone beat and treated like an animal, Aubri understands a small portion of the freedoms we have here. Andy and Sera's futures are both so different here, with being able to be citizens, where in their own country they would never have had the privledges of even being abe to attend school with peers who were not orphaned. It is hard to see our economy under such duress right now, but is is so good to be able to count the blessings we do have!! So many people in this world are not sharing in the blessings we can so easily take for granted.

We hope you were able to enjoy some holiday fun too!!