Fourth of July

Once again it is the 4th of July.  Our kids love this day.  It is one of my favorites as well.  Especially on our street.  Our neighbors throw a huge neighborhood party at lunch time.  It is a bike parade and a BBQ. And they think there were around 400 people there this year.  This year I made all my kids' matching outfits for the 4th.  I made Reid's shorts solid though because he wouldn't wear the gingham.  I am lucky he wore the shirt it made.  It is getting harder to get the kids to all want to join in.

Once again I decorated the car with lots of torn up streamers.  This year I did mix it up a little with a red, white, and blue chevron car.

Poor Dean fell asleep before the parade began.  How cute is his little bow tie.

All the kids ready to start the parade.  This year our neighbor played the national anthem on his guitar before the parade began and there were a couple people playing bag pipes during the parade and some police on motorcycles led the parade.

My dad and Dean.  I love this with Dean pointing to where he wants Grandpa to take him.

The chef's had to wear swim goggles to keep the smoke out of their eyes.

We then went to another neighbor's that night for fireworks.  It was such a fun day.

Like Mother Like Son

Reid has definitely inherited some of my genes.  He loves to create things.  And he does it all day.  Recently he has been making these guns out of paper.  He had a whole collection of them, but I forgot to get a picture and by the time I remembered they were destroyed by all the kids playing with them.  Anyway, here are 2 of them.  The bigger rifle one can cock too.  I am always amazed when he comes out of his room or our office with one of his creations.  His friends love it because he makes them all kinds of things.

Reid also looooves nerf guns and his newest thing is taking them apart or organizing them. (once again like his mom.  I love to organize) He takes them apart to either make them shoot further or to try to create new guns.   He took the 2 guns above apart and so now half is yellow and half is blue. One use to be all blue and the other all yellow.

Here he made some little boxes to hold all of his nerf clips. (has he been looking on pinterest??!!)

Here he made a box for his nerf darts.  Oh and I forgot he labels everything.  (Pinterest????)

This is his nerf dart box we bought him and he made a compartment in it that holds his clips.

Here he is taking apart one of his guns to try to make it shoot further.  He calls it a modification.  There were so many pieces in this particular nerf gun that he couldn't put it back together by himself and so Daddy had to help him which was a long process.  He might have learned his lesson after this one.