Baby's First Independence Day

Yesterday, at the annual neighborhood parade, I couldn't help but remember last year, when I was a mere 5ish weeks from delivering this sugar plum...



...and how I volunteered to drive the float, so I could sit in the truck's air conditioning. And I (again) was thankful to be enjoying this little one outside of my belly this summer.

We had fun!

Playing in the water from the fire truck a little...(I told Jules, next year you'll be able to run free! She wanted us to let her loose so badly!)



(argh with the bad focusing on the 4S...user error, I guess.)




With (great) Granny...



The band:



The crowd (and a balloon column--did you know the price of helium has shot up (pun intended) over the past year?):



The cutie pies (Jules and her buddy Rhet)...they never looked at the camera at the same time, of course!





Looking at the firetruck's water with Aunt Martha...



The extent of the baking as I could muster this year (mostly due to the prospect of a hot kitchen?)...



Trying ice cream for the first time at the evening cookout (Miss Ann's homemade vanilla)!





Don't be fooled...she LOVED IT.


I always look at photos like this one below and for a split-second think, "is she really mine? how is this possible?"



(and why did you leave that gum showing in the photo, Leslie? ugh!)

The Wednesday holiday has proved to be pretty Twilight Zone. Dropping Juliette off at school this morning totally felt like a Monday. I was annoyed with the late-night fireworks revelry in our neighborhood last night because, duh, don't we all have to go to work tomorrow? But it's Thursday. So it's like we had a weekend in the middle of the week. Except not.

Great job, America.


2011 July 4th post
2010 July 4th post
2009 July 4th post