Happy 4th!!

The town where dh's office is located (about 10 min from here) has a 4th of July Parade every year. I figured we'd check it out & see if the girls enjoyed it. They were all for that idea, and then we woke up to a steady rain (mind you, weather.com said 30% chance of scattered showers all morning, it was a very STEADY 30% ALL morning LOL). So, parade was supposed to start at 10am, raindate was set for tomorrow. When it was still steadily raining with no sign of letting up at 9:30 I figured it was a given that they'd be doing it tomorrow instead (and we're not around tomorrow). Girls were sad, but no total meltdowns over it (when I told them about the parade I did so w/ the caveat of "if it doesn't rain"). DH had been planning to work this afternoon anyway, so decided he could go ahead & go in to work & drive by the parade route on his way to the office to see for sure. Turns out they DID have the parade. So, dh called me, I threw kids in the car (w/o even bothering to hunt down umbrellas) and we met him over there. we were near the end of the parade route so we had plenty of time before the parade got to us, despite being late. The girls LOVED it!

• They got flags to wave (actually since we were late, we JUST missed the people that came through ahead of the parade handing out flags to everyone but an older couple standing near us noticed that we didn't have flags & gave theirs to the girls)
  
• Gathered a whole handful (or more accurately pocket of my tote bag-full) of candy that was thrown at us from various parade participants
• Miss Laura (from Kindermusik) would've been proud to hear the girls naming the various instruments they saw in the marching band, etc.
  
• Uncle Sam on stilts absolutely AMAZED them
• People dressed in revolutionary war costumes thrilled them "Mommy look, they look like the REDCOATS" (nevermind that they were blue, they had the era correct anyway LOL)
• There were various "categories" that people could enter and the girls loved the "pets" category. Their favorite was a tiny little dog riding in a stroller.
• Firetrucks are always fun.
• One of the firetrucks was an antique one. When I said it was a "really old" firetruck, they asked me "as old as George Washington?" nope, not quite, but thanks to the sign on the side of it telling me that it was 1947, I could tell them that it was "about as old as Papa" they found that pretty impressive . . . "wow, that's OLD!!!"

So, the day was a success. We walked over to the park afterwards to see what it's like. But at first glance anyway there was very little food options for the girls & me (mostly hotdogs & such) and it was STILL raining steadily and they announced (soon after we got over there) that the kids' games (not sure what exactly they'd have involved) were cancelled because of the rain so we opted to go ahead & leave.

And other fun stuff in our world . . . yesterday when I was cleaning A was enjoying being helper girl, and wanted to help me mop, but I only have one mop & I don't think she could've really done much w/ it since it's taller than her, and I didn't really feel like standing and watching her try to use my mop, so I told her maybe next time. So . . . when dh got home yesterday afternoon I ran out to do some errands w/o kids having to come along. And at Target I found a "mop" that is actually one of those long handled things to clean bathtubs & such with, but it's got a microfibre pad & looks like a small mop and the handle is "extendable" and at it's shortest setting is just the right height for the girls. So I got one (since L hadn't shown any interest AND I wanted to make sure it would work as a mop), I also found kid sized (or maybe they have extendable handles too, I don't remember) brooms so I got them too. When I got home, you'd have thought I'd gotten A this year's equivalent of Tickle Me Elmo. She was SOOO EXCITED to have her own mop & L wanted to know how they were supposed to SHARE one! So today we had to re-mop the bathroom floor & they both tried it & declared it acceptable so I guess next week we'll have to head back to Target & get a 2nd one. Now fingers crossed that they continue to think it's fun to mop LOL. Once the rain goes away I'm going to set them to work on the patio w/ those new brooms too :)