4th of July

We had a very, very soggy Fourth of July this year.  It rained all day (and for the two next days).  All the fireworks in the area except for the downtown Nashville show were canceled.  Even Nashville had to change some things (like no live music) to accommodate the weather.

The 3rd was still nice though and as Brian drove back from Knoxville that afternoon, he stopped by one of the fireworks stores and bought a $6 kit of poppers, sparklers, etc.  I'm surprised the store didn't just give him the small kit because Brian saw most people buying hundreds or thousands of dollars of fireworks :)

When Brian got home, we went ahead and tried out a few things.

These shot out streamers ...

These were called snake-somethings???  You light the little pellets and they grow turning into "snakes".

The boys tried out a few sparklers too.  These changed colors as they burned down but were super difficult to keep lit.

Unfortunately this is what the 4th looked like all day.  We ended up staying home and just relaxing all day.

We did try out some pop-its in the garage at one point (after adding one more coat of paint to the cornhole boards Brian made).

In the evening we ventured out for a walk in the rain.  We were finally getting a break for an hour or two with only some drizzle.

There were plenty of puddles for jumping.

Because it was the driest it had been all day, we decided to go ahead and finish up all the sparklers and small fireworks we had.

Listen to Carter say, "Wow, that is beautiful." :)

The boys went to bed a little later than normal but we decided to not keep them up too late because we figured everyone would save their fireworks for the weekend since we hadn't heard any yet.

We were so wrong.  The boys had skipped naps and fell asleep as soon as they were in bed.  About 5 minutes later a family behind us started shooting off giant fireworks in the alley behind our house.  They were so close and right over our house that you had to walk into the yard to see them.  My ears were ringing from how loud they were too.  Amazingly, the boys slept through the noise!