America's Birthday

Jacob has been pretty excited about "America's Birthday"! We started the day off at our ward building eating breakfast with friends and our Boy Scouts. We came home and Dan made home-made raspberry ice cream. YUM!

We have lived in Maryland for 3 years now and have finally celebrated the 4th of July the right way! Dan and I didn't feel up to braving the crowds on the metro to watch the fireworks on the Mall so when a friend recommended watching them at the Iwo Jima Memorial we decided that sounded perfect.

We enjoyed naps and plenty of homemade ice cream before leaving the house at 4pm with our lawn chairs, blankets, food, and two backpacks of busy toys for the kids. Traffic was great until we needed to get off at our exit.  All the exits around the memorial were closed off. We spent an hour circling around and finally decided just to hike. Our GPS said we were about one mile from the monument so we left the chairs and started on our way with Abby in the stroller. About 5 minutes into the walk Tess tripped and skinned up her knees pretty bad. She was such a good trooper about it though!  She continued to walk even with bloody knees (note to self, bring a first aid kit on all outings). So our one mile distance took us 40 minutes. We met up with some friends, the Jenkin's and Sundberg's, and spent the rest of the evening eating, chatting, and entertaining the kids.

Abby and Elle: the "binkie" girls are best buddies!

Necklace Making

Madi and Tess coloring

As a mom of three young kids I have a hard time really relaxing when we are in a big crowd.  However, once the fireworks started and I took a moment to actually remember that it was really the 4th of July, I was in AWE!  Here we were at our nations capitol, sitting on the U.S. Marine Core Memorial lawn right by Arlington Cemetery watching a beautiful show of lights fall over the Washington Monument and Lincoln memorial... it made all the craziness of traffic and crowds totally worth it. I couldn't help but think of my Dad and how much he would enjoy this! Next year Dad!!!

(Above is a picture from google images that Anie found of our view, below is a picture Dan took.)

The walk back to the car after the fireworks took us an entire hour. I have to say Jake and Tess did amazingly well. It was a lot to ask of their little legs 3 hours past their bedtime! We just went slowly and they didn't complain at all! It was a fun adventure. I hope to be able to share it with my family again next year!!!

We forgot to take very many pictures so thanks Anie for sending me your pictures of my kids!