Happy Birthday America!!!

As promised, here is our post about our July 4 activities.  There are going to be a lot of photos and a little writing, so yay for that.

As I mentioned in my blog post here, we spent the night with Deanne on Tuesday night so we could be there bright and early on July 4.  The little town they live in has great Fourth of July activities...starting with a pancake breakfast down at the local church, then a parade and all day activities at the park.  It's total Americana at it's best.  Small town America.  And nearly every year we are there celebrating with family.  The coolest thing about it is that Deanne lives across the street from the park, so we come and go all day which is nice when it's over 100 degrees out (like it has been the last 2 weeks!). 

Jenna's BFF, Gracie, spent the day (and night) with us and that was wonderful because it kept Jenna from getting bored and they just thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  Again, that's part of what I love about Steve's family is it doesn't matter who traipses in randomly, they are always welcome.  I remember how I felt the first time I was with the family when Steve and I first started dating...I was so nervous, but after the first few minutes, it's like I was already family.  But I digress.  I guess the best way to tell you about the 4th is through photos, so here we go...

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Kylie was SO cute in her patriotic dress.  I wanted to get a good photo of her, but now that she's walking, that's virtually impossible.

See what I mean?  Always on the go.  Amazingly, this one didn't turn out blurry like all the others.

Still a little blurry, but you get the idea.  She was cute.



This was pre-parade.  The clown was in a car in front of us.  You can see Kylie wasn't all to sure about him.

My BIL is running for Alderman so he had a float and Steve pulled it.  And yes, Steve, Kylie, Katie and I were in the air conditioned cab!!!  :)

One of the activities was a hula hoop contest.  My girl can hula hoop for HOURS.  And that talent DID. NOT. COME. FROM. ME.  She kept saying she was going to win it and I believed she could.

And lookie there...she DID win!  First Place!  And she could have kept on going...

Here are the two BFFs!  Gracie was a trooper.  Did everything Jenna did and placed about 5th I think with the Hula Hooping.  The girl has got some moves too!

Next up was the pageant.  We entered Jenna our first year with her (she was 3 weeks old) and she won first place!  I think year 2 she got 2nd place and after that quit placing so we stopped entering her.  Kylie didn't win anything this time either, but she was the cutest kid on stage.  :)

Jenna entered herself in the pageant this year.  She and Gracie decided to do it and I think having Gracie there gave Jenna the confidence.  Here's my girl with her own put together outfit.  That skirt was Target clearance for $8.  There were 24 girls in her division, so I warned her not to get her hopes up.  There were clearly girls who did pageants before...makeup and all.  But I would not let Jenna wear any.  I told her if she couldn't win with a natural look, then she didnt' need to be in the pageant.

And there she is!!!!  2nd runner up!!!!  She is so proud of herself!  And I'm stoked too!  I've always known my girl was beautiful and this just lets her know that others think so too!!!

 As soon as the big girls were done with their pageant, we headed back to the house to pack up.  It had been a long day for Kylie and she had done SO well I didn't want to push my luck.  After packing, we drove the 45 minutes back home.  The big girls and Steve dropped by our friends, the Canadas, who were having a big ole party, and to pick up the pizza.  While they were gone, I fed Kylie who nearly fell asleep while eating, and put her to bed.  I even managed a shower before they got back.  We ate, watched part of a movie and just had a great evening together, but I was beat!  I did not want to get up and go to work the next morning, but I did it anyway.

I'll have to say, it was probably one of the best 4th of July celebrations I've had.  The notion that this was Kylie's first day in a country which is FREE was not lost on me.  This is the first of many holidays she is bound to enjoy.  Next year we'll enter that pageant and we'll sweep the competition.  :)  Stay tuned.