Ellie's First Fourth of July!

I am a few days late posting about this, but we recently celebrated Ellie's first 4th of July! To kick off the day, I made the kids homemade buttermilk waffles with blueberries, strawberries, and cool whip. Then we hung around the house till after naptime, when we headed over to Island Park here in Springfield for the annual Lights of Liberty celebration. They had a ton of things to do for the kids... a "tattoo" station, duck prize pool, hoola hoops, a big slide, a photo booth, and more! It was a beautiful day with perfect  warm, sunny weather.

We decided to come back home and have a BBQ at our own house. We put Ellie to bed first so she could get some sleep before the fireworks later that night. Then James, Eliot, and I ate hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, and corn on the cob on the back porch.

 James kept asking me to hold his little flag all day, so when we got in the car at 9pm to go see the fireworks, he was thrilled to hold his American flag and wave it around! We set up camp near a small creek that had some natural mint growing in the grass (smelled soooo good) and Eliot and I took turns taking James over to check out the stage featuring some country music band.

It was getting pretty late (10pm) when the fireworks started. Ellie cuddled with her Daddy in the Ergo and James and I curled up under a blanket on the ground. James kept alternating between saying, "Wow! Whoa!" and "I want to go home and go night night." :-)

All in all, a very fun first Independence Day for my little sweetheart!

Here is photo album of the day's events:

4th of July 2013