Celebratory Fun!

Happy post 4th of July!

Was yours amazing? I really hope so! Whether you chose to party it up or opted for the more quiet route, I hope you had an awesome day.

Thankfully ours was not nearly as eventful as last year. No boiling hot water coming out of the shower. No butterflies plotting the demise of my sweet son, which is always nice. I do enjoy the catastrophe-free holidays around here.

It's always a little weird to celebrate American holidays when you're in another country. But celebrate we do! We had some amazing friends over. There was tons of food! And we shot off fireworks...of course. Because what self-respecting American, living in another country, wouldn't drive everyone crazy with that. It is our nation's (& my daughter's) birthday after all!

Celebrating Miss M's birthday was wonderful. Brian and I were lucky enough to find her a minion cake that she was ecstatic about! And her presents? Well, yet again, I wish I had video'd her opening the last one. That was really fun to watch. (Some day I'll remember to do that....take video instead of just pictures.) 

Can you believe she's 9?! I can't!! It seems like just yesterday she was a teensy tiny baby.

Where did the time go?? And can I get it back??

That face was priceless! But she was uber excited to get her new tablet! 

Which, by the way, is fair warning for anyone she knows. She is now learning to email...

As always, she will tell you that this was her best birthday ever. But like at Christmas, she and brother and sister say this every year. So really, I'm not sure you should believe her. Lol

Our 4th of July (aka America's birthday) celebrations were just as awesome. First off, I should go ahead and tell you that Brian and I bought our fireworks a few days ago with absolutely zero idea about what to get aside from sparklers. They have different names here so we were clueless. We ended up picking out a few different things that had really fun names like Night Bugs and Mutant Space Cherries. ((I don't know who could resist anything with a name like mutant space cherries!))

Thanks to that weird daylight thing we the kids had to wait forever to do fireworks because the sun takes forever to go down enough to see them. But once it did we were outside in a heartbeat! And it was awesome!! Ok, really, the night bugs were not so awesome. They would be awesome at a fireworks show, but not in your driveway. In your driveway they're just really really loud! (How any of us can still hear is a miracle.) And there are no pretty lights to go with it. Just loud noise. (In hindsight, that one was not a great choice.)

Writing with sparklers is so much fun!

I don't remember what these were called...but they were really pretty!

The Mutant Space Cherries!!

I don't think we were supposed to set those off at our house...in the driveway.

But we did. And it was so worth it!

Our final 4th of July here in the UK and it was done right. I can't wait to celebrate back home next year!!

And dear crabby neighbor guy...I hope your cats have calmed down. You might want to invest in some kitty xanax around Guy Fawkes Day.