fourth of july palooza

we had such a wonderful fourth of july this year. oh how i love this holiday oh so much! we celebrated this wonderful country with friends, food, games, fireworks, and memories. in the morning we went to ward's annual pancake breakfast. yet again, it was a little stressful for casey to get all the food cooked, griddles working, and other food warmed, but it all ended great. maxson loved running away from us to the playground. we came home and began getting ready for the get together that night. i do love planning get togethers, they always end up as so much fun but oh man, even with friends volunteering to help with the event it's a lot of stress to host, ha. there's so many things you can't ask people to help with or so many last minute things in your house you want to bring out that you think about at the last minute. so fun, but so much work ha. i might have to take a break from hosting over the next while to a) reduce my stress during this pregnancy and b) stay a live while having twins and maxson. but on to the party!

we began with the children playing in the front with kiddie pools and the sprinkler slip-n-slide, even though it wasn't hot hot that day, the kids still ate it up. and it's fun to watch them all interact together. not to my benefit, maxson's aim with squirt guns is getting better

some of the boys then pulled out a water balloon launcher and began playing with that in the street. funny how they all turned into teenagers in about 10 seconds. some went to the further end of the street and began trying to hit the launched water balloons with baseball bats. silly boys…maxson wanted all in on the action

we ventured to the backyard and began eating all the yummy food everyone brought (for most get togethers we do as friends it's bring your own meat and a side or dessert to share, and in this case for a special holiday it's a side and dessert, and then i try to assign out the paper products to others to relieve the burden/stress/cost. usually we always use ours and our neighbor's grill)

everyone always makes such great efforts on the dessert area, it seriously is spectacular every year, here's some of the first desserts i got pictured (not pictured were 2 delicious trifles and layered jello) (also maxson is too tall for his own good and swiped so many desserts off the table when we didn't see. let's just say his bowels did not agree with him the next day…)

maxson parked himself by the water jugs for a lot of the evening. he loves to push the water out of these jugs and in the special case of never before, one wasn't just water. it was (very concentrated) gatorade thanks to casey. maxson went hog wild.

a few of the families brought the little snapper popper things that even tiny kids can throw on the ground. all the children loved it. they would throw them and if the didn't pop they would go over and stomp on them , so cute. maxson did not like being forced to sit on casey's lap as he lit off a few of the first rounds of ground flowers, it took more than just those snappers to get him used to it all.

our great neighbors filled up a bajillion water balloons and the kids (and adults) had a flipping blast with them, i couldn't believe how long they lasted with the little kids just going over there and throwing them on the ground to watch them pop, they must have filled up so many. but they lasted forever and were tons of fun. we had an adult water balloon contest which was fun for everyone and then we had one with kids and they loved it.






the water balloon launcher came back out and the little boys dads saw how tall they could launch them and try to catch them in their shirts, they were hoots to watch



we did a few games with kids and adults
i don't have a picture of the funniest one, but we did one where each couple had a large balloon sandwiched between them, and without touching your partner we ran a race around the tree. so hilarious.

we had the 1 and two year olds do  straight up foot race and it was SO FUNNY. some kids sprinted from start to finish real well, some just happened to follow in the excitement of others which worked for them, some slowly walked over staring at all the parents on their way, and some just cried and cried and cried. children are the best. the finish line was filled with parents holding their best bribing object: mom, a cookie, pop, or in maxson's case, an iPhone


here's a really awful video of the race, it was so funny. at the end you'll see a little boy on the far left just barely, he cried his whole way to his mom, so funny/cute. i should have kept videoing but didn't.

the cookie face competition was great to watch everyone's strained faces.
for the first time in my life i got the cookie in my mouth and was SUPER proud of myself



the rest of the evening was filled with firework fun from small to big. most the little kids were not so keen on it at first but after 10 minutes warmed up to it. maxson surprised us by the end of the evening he finally wanted to hold a firework. such a sweetie. he parked himself on my lap during it all, very unusual behavior for him to sit for so long, ha.






casey had lots of fun with the fireworks again this year. each year we learn what things to buy and not buy with our little budget. it's fun for me to watch that cute husband of mine have so much fun with it. he's gonna be such a perfect dad to all these boys

ps- the goo sparklers are illegal in nebraska this year, how lamo is that?