Pre-holiday celebrating

We believe any holiday worth celebrating is worth celebrating for more than one day. So we started our 4th of July celebrations on the 2nd with a fun neighborhood parade, snow-cones, and the slip ‘n slide. It was a good day. Ro is in the firecracker dress and Ree is in the white skirt. (Check out the pics when the girls wore the red shirt for the 4th back in 2009 here and here. Ro’s dress came from H2 and S2, and I’ll bet their folks have a pic of their girls wearing it too).

Someone, actually three someones, were pretty eager to get to the candy parade:

I brought a squirt bottle, and said that anytime someone held up a W (three fingers) I’d squirt the heck out of them. So refreshing on a smokin’  hot day – I’m adding this as a permanent fixture to our beach bag. Notice that Catherine (far right) is not missing out on this action:

Thanks for scoring us the front-view rock-star seats, Maggie!

I like how they hold hands, even though they were fighting to the death over some toy this morning:

It’s just not a true holiday if you can’t climb a tree:

Catherine made me cry when she broke out this little swimsuit that Ro and Ree used to wear the first year they came home (see the baby chub pics here). Awwwwww!:

True princesses wear their crowns even when Slip ‘n Sliding:

Pretty good run-up for this one. Ree isn’t messing around. Maggie’s nephew loved the Slip n/ Slide too:

Doesn’t Ree look completely zen when she’s sliding? I can picture this girl surfing when she’s older:

Oh yeah, Hannah liked it. She liked it all:

We broke out the new snow-cone machine and the kids gave it one-hundred thumbs up. I nearly died laughing when Hannah’s tiny arm appeared through a crack in the heavy sliding door to ask for more please. Rumor has it that Catherine might be sneaking one of these snow-cone machines back home:

Catherine and Maggie thought the Rootbeer flavor was tops. The kids seemed to prefer the Blue Raspberry. Any guesses which one I liked? Heh.

Tomorrow’s the party at our house and the big neighborhood fireworks. Yay!

PS: We were all in red and white and had mini pancakes with real maple syrup on the 1st in honor of Canada Day, I’ll have to sneak the back posts in later.