We survived the fourth of July with all of us in tact! I should have had an inkling of how important this holiday was going to be for Chad last week when he so willingly agreed to visit the San Marcos outlets 45 minutes away last Saturday. It turns out there was a fireworks "superstore" 5 minutes away from the outlets he wanted to hit on the way back. Sneaky.

I cannot believe these things are legal! They're packaged looking like candy with ridiculous comic book style names and warnings like: "Caution: Shoots large balls of fire". I tried to convince Chad the girls didn't care and would be just as happy with a lighted match, but you can imagine how well that went over.

We attended our first Fourth of July parade. Apparently they have these all over the country, we've just never attended one. The girls liked waving at everyone and things got really good when they started throwing candy. Lots and lots of sticky candy.We liked these guys. There were real shell casings from the shotgun all over the ground after they walked by.Izzy looked comatose for the first half of the parade. She got woken up from her nap to attend.We didn't like these guys. There were several groups of these medieval types and we're not quite sure why they were in the parade. And why so many middle-aged people were dressed up like medieval people and pirates. I think they scared the girls.

You can't appreciate how tall this truck is from the picture. I don't think there were any rules about who could be in the parade or not. I think if you showed up and wanted to walk or drive in it, you could be in it.