Happy Birthday America!

We celebrated the 4th with our friends the Pognants and Drakes with a great cookout and then fireworks. It was Whitney's first go at fireworks and she did very well. We were very skeptical because she has recently become very afraid of loud noises after Ben was teaching her about thunder and one cracked right in front of our house...Anyway, we showed her plenty of fireworks on the Internet and reiterated that they would be very loud, but that she could cover her ears. We told her they went "pow, pow, pow" and that she had to say "ooooh" and "ahhhh". So we tried to make it a big deal all week to warm her up. Once we got settled to watch the show, we really lucked out because there was a smaller show in the distance that really warmed her up to the idea so that once the closer show started she was already comfortable. She loved them and can't/won't stop talking about them and asking us if we like fireworks. She just keeps asking to see fireworks and says they are "sooooo pretty". We were going to do sparklers at the fireworks, but as Ben was on his way to the car to get the cigarette lighter, flames broke out 50 yards from us from someone else sparklers, so we thought maybe that wasn't such a good idea. So we broke them out last night...Hope you all had a great 4th to celebrate our freedom!

The whole group...Little Miss herself waiting for the fireworksStomping pops...they wouldn't work by throwing themSitting with daddyPretty sparklers