4th of july

i am becoming horrible at taking pictures. it is really a shame, because i do love it so much. this year on Independence Day, i didn't get many photos at all. for one, i was marching in the Hillsboro 4th of July parade myself. 

which dan did snap a quick shot of. thanks, honey. i am holding the banner on the left.

it was a fun parade to march in, especially since it was in hillsboro... i saw lots of familiar faces, which made it pretty awesome. 

after i marched in the parade, i joined my family & watched the rest (since we were the first thing in the parade, i got to see a good chunk of the rest of the parade). arlo loved the parade and very surprisingly sat on my lap the entire time (very unusual for him). probably because i had been gone for the entire week before doing army stuff in bend, klamath falls, and medford. 

once the parade was over, we walked over to dan's parent's house..... and we ALL took a nap, it was super nice. we got up, ate some yummy BBQ food, then took the max home and relaxed for awhile. i had just gotten back the previous night from being away and it was sooo nice to be together again as a family. this was the longest that i had been away from dan & arlo. it was really, really hard on me (and them as well). we went out to red robin for dinner (it ended up being free due to a gift card & arlo's free birthday dinner, SCORE!) then we went back over to dan's parent's house for some fireworks. 

sparklers

again, not taking many pictures at all because arlo was in my lap the entire time. he wasn't quite sure what to think about the fire works. he wasn't scared, but he didn't like the noise. for one of the loud, screechy ones (who likes those anyway?) i covered his ears. for the rest of the night anytime a firework would get lit he would say "mom! cover ears!!!". so, i sat & covered his ears most of the night. arlo did get to hold his own sparkler though, he really liked that. and i didn't get a picture because i was the one helping him do it and he kept almost touching the sparkler to his face or body. 

after a good amount of fireworking, we called it a night and went home and crashed.