Celebration Conundrum

After driving to Utah and back last month, I had to sit down and have a serious discussion with myself about limitations. In particular, physical limitations that my body seems to have placed itself. It used to be no problem whatsoever to put four or five or six kids in the car and drive us all to Utah or Oregon, or wherever the fun was to be found. Sadly for me,I find that not to be the case any longer. So after the last trip, I committed myself to staying home for the summer, and also, trying to be happy about doing that. This committment came with a few challenges.

First, what to do with all these kids for the hundred days of summer?

And second, foremost in my childrens minds'...
"WHAT ABOUT THE FOURTH OF JULY? HOW CAN IT BE THE FOURTH OF JULY IF WE'RE NOT IN OREGON?"

I guess I didn't realize that so many of our last years' Independance Days were celebrated in Oregon. I didn't realize that to my children, Oregon was the only place to spend it. So, we had a little talk. I asked them, "What is it about Oregon that makes the Fourth so fun?" The overwhelming answer that came back was, "Fireworks, the blowtorch, and dancing Grandpa Steve". (I'm not sure about the dancing Grandpa Steve part?...maybe I missed that last year.) Anyway, we found most of these hurdles easy enough to get over. Alyssa brought us some Oregon Fireworks on her way back to Southern California, and I went to Lowe's and bought a blow torch. Easy enough.



Then, we realized that the Fourth of July was on Sunday. Now, you know me, I love to dress the part for holidays. And I love to dress the kids for the holidays too. Joe IV is finally starting to put up a fuss about being dressed like everyone else, but everyone else still doesn't seem to mind. I didn't attempt to get a picture of them all together, but did get some snipets of our day...

I thought these boys looked especially patriotic. Jack was dressed the same, but slept through the photo shoot...







It took some convincing, but I finally got Maggie to consent to wearing her "boyfriend blazer", even though it was really just her little brother's church coat.




And then, we set a pretty table, made some star shaped jello, and poured ourselves some red, white and blue drinks. Dad and Grandpa explained the chemistry involved in it all...




Finally, the lights went down and we got busy in the backyard. Harry was of course the official "torch-master" and all the kids enjoyed some sparklers and fountains of color.




In the end, we all still missed Oregon a bit...but we realized that what we missed about Oregon were the people; Grandma Lark and [dancing] Grandpa Steve, Aunts and Uncles and all the fun cousins. The rest of it though, could all be found at home.