Happy Independence Day!

We had a great 4th of July holiday today!  Our day was jam packed with celebrations!

First up, our friends Leslie and Steve are members of the cabana club in our neighborhood and they invited us to the party at their pool.  We met up with them around lunch time and stayed all afternoon. 

 

Hank is starting swim lessons at the club on Monday with a personal instructor.  He is excited!

 

The girls wore swim suits today for the first time!  I didn't get proper pictures of them posing in their suits.  Bummer.  They looked so adorable!  The girls were in dire need of a nap at the pool so I took them home to rest.  We let Hank skip his nap today and he stayed at the pool with Brett until almost dinner time.  Hank cried the whole way home from the pool because he was so sad to leave.  When he got home he asked to put on his swim suit again so we got out a clean and dry one for him to wear to our next stop...the neighborhood block party.

 Before we left for the block party we tried to get the kiddos to pose for a picture with their flags.  This was about as good of a picture as we could get.  The rest looked like this...

 

 

 

 

All decked out in red, white and blue strolling through the neighborhood to get to the party.

Charlotte

Ruby

Hank leading the way.  Extremely excited for the party because he heard there was going to be a bounce house there.

The Santa Clara Fire Department brought one of their engines over to the party and hung out for a while.  They hooked up a hose and Hank was really interested in what they were doing.

Fascinated by the firemen working on their hose.  He carried his flag all the way from our house to the party.

Hank's first foray into water balloons happened today.  He loved it and kept running over to get a new balloon every time he broke one.  I think we'll be doing water balloons at our house soon.

 Brett was in a watermelon eating contest...

 ...and he WON!  SO HILARIOUS!!!  Hank was fascinated by the concept of "racing" to eat.  He had a sly smile on his face as he watched Brett go.

Brett and Hank shooting the breeze with a fire fighter.

They showed kids how to shoot the water hose.  How cool is that???

Hank bounced like crazy in the bouncy house.  He bounced during the little kid times and also when it was only supposed to be big kids.  He was unstoppable and refused to get out.  Brett and I kinda liked the fact that he was entertained so we let him stay.  The bad thing about bouncy houses is that Hank doesn't understand his own strength and he takes kids out.  He made an 8 year old cry today.  oops!  The only way we got Hank to come home with us was he accidentally slid out the front door of the bouncy house and we snatched him up and plopped him in the stroller.  He thought about resisting but he was too exhausted and just gave up.  It took us a few minutes to say bye to our friends and by the time we were walking home both girls had fallen asleep in our front packs and Hank was starting to fade too since it was well past their bed times.  Once we got home everyone was happy to get to bed!  (No fireworks for this crew...we couldn't bear keeping them up late since they had already missed so much sleep in the afternoon.  Maybe next year!)

I am pretty sure today was the funnest day of Hank's life so far.  Swimming for hours, checking out a fire truck, spraying the fire hose, playing with water balloons, and bouncy endlessly in a bounce house.  Sounds like the perfect day for Hank!  It was great for us too!

We are so thankful to live in this great country!  Happy Independence Day!

-a