Fourth of July

The Fourth of July is pretty much my favorite day of the year. I love that we spend the day with great friends and family and all of the traditions we follow year after year. I was telling my sister how great the 4th is here in Georgia so she decided to bring her cute family and spend the holiday with us this year. And as a bonus, some friends came too.

We started the day with a parade. The weather was PERFECT! We met up with lots of friends on the Parkway and while the kids prepared themselves to catch lots of candy, the Hottie practiced his heckling. Everyone should have the opportunity to stand by my husband at the parade at least once in your life. It's an experience you'll never forget.

Here's a few shots of my cute kids while we waited for the parade to start.My cute nephew.Cute Cousins. I stayed up until 2 am finishing up the girls outfits. They loved them!The skirts were really twirly.I felt like mother of the year until my friend Laurie showed up with her girls.THREE outfits! Matching headbands and everything! Too cute.

The kids had their candy bags waiting and finally the parade started. This gets me every year. The uniforms, the flags, the bagpipes. We live in such a great country!Everyone on the parade route was given a flag to wave and then the candy throwing began. The kids came home with giant bags of loot. Candy, glowsticks, frisbees, coupons, and my favorite-bomb pops!

We spent the afternoon at home. We had a great lunch and ate homemade ice cream and the kids played on the slip n slide in the backyard. We were outside most of the day and it was totally pleasant. I still can't believe how great the weather was.

We made our way over to the golf course for the fireworks and stopped and picked up a bucket of chicken on the way. We spent the next couple of hours having a picnic, playing frisbee, chatting with friends and waiting for it to get dark. Baby loved his chicken! The fireworks were great and it was a wonderful day. Oh! And the best part...reuniting with old friends.

Lousy picture but the four of us grew up together in Vegas. That's Misty, Me, Carolyn and Marlena (my sister). Mar lives in Memphis and Carolyn does too while her husband does his residency. We just found out that Misty lives about an hour from me, so she came down and spent the day. It was great to see her again after 20 years.