Independance Day Celebrations

I can't believe the 4th of July has come and gone. I really feel like we were just celebrating Christmas now here we are halfway to Christmas again!
We had a fun 4th that didn't turn out exactly the way we had planned, but we had fun anyway.
We started off the day at our Fun Days parade. Emma & Abbie were in the parade- Emma on the Figure Skating Club float and Abbie on the Cookie Cutters float again. They were so excited and had a fun time- forgot the camera so no pictures. :(

Originally we had planned on heading up to the camp ground where Grandma & Grandpa O are serving a mission, but we got a call around noon saying that Aunt Sherrie was on her way to the hospital to have baby P.J.! So exciting news, but disappointment for the kiddos who were really looking forward to camping this weekend. So being the nice mother that I am (or crazy mother, take your pick), I said that we could have a fire and pitch a tent in the backyard.

So, that's exactly what we did. We had fun roasting marshmallows and doing the whole s'mores thing again. Ellie likes to make the s'mores, but not eat them. She doesn't like to be messy.

Not the greatest picture of Abbie and Emma :)

Or of their mother :/

We caught a few of the city's fireworks over the top of our house and then the neighbor's behind us had some illegal ones that were awesome. So we didn't have to go anywhere to get a great show. The tent was set up and ready to go, jammies on, sticky hands and faces washed, all ready for bed. Ya, right. We made it into the tent around 10:30, read a little bit in our Ramona the Brave book and settled down to sleep. Pretty crowded in that tent with 6 people in there. After a few minutes, Ellie decided that sleeping in a tent was not for her and she wanted her own bed. She was "not comforble Mommy". So I sacrificed and slept in the house with her. Mark was a trooper and slept all night in the tent with the rest of the kids.
All in all, a fun weekend and the bonus part about it is that our cute little cousin/niece, P.J. Carrasco was born on the 4th! Our little firecracker baby!