Celebrating Independence!

This post is ridiculously late, but I adore these photos so better late than never, no? Yeah, that probably doesn't apply so much in this case, but oh well :-). Just a few more posts after this one, and I'll actually be completely caught up . . . woot-woot!

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays, and one of the things I love about it is that we tend to celebrate it at home! Now don't get me wrong, I love to travel for holidays and I especially love spending them with family, but sometimes it's great to just be home as well. 

The 4th fell during a pretty hectic time of our lives. June brought VBS, Angie's wedding, and a crazy fertility cycle with it, so we were running on fumes by the time July arrived. We just wanted to relax at home with a few friends and have a low key night, and that's exactly what we did!

Before our company arrived for the evening, I took Brianna outside to take a few photos. She looked so cute in her red, white, and blue gear!

I'm so glad she's finally at an age where she'll stand and pose for photos!

I think this dress will be adorable next year with a pair of leggings . . . I'm going to get as much use out of it as I can!

This is one of my favorite photos of my little sunshine! She was being such a sweetie.

Brenson got up from his nap and joined us for the photos. This is the one photo I got of him smiling. Then, he decided he was finished with the whole mess. Sigh.

Every other photo looks like this, so I gave up! Although, admittedly, this photo makes me laugh every time I see it :-).

Soon after our photo shoot, our friends arrived. We celebrated with

the newlyweds, Jesse & Angie,

the soon-to-be parents, Tia & Ross,

my sister and her family - Russ, Chloe Jo, and Lisa,

Chris's parents,

and our little family!

We didn't do anything fancy . . . just grilled burgers, played games outside, and visited. It was just what Chris and I wanted and needed!

Okay, so there's actually two photos of Bren smiling. Chris's mom really wanted a nice photo with my kiddos, but they were being kind of wild. Story of my life!

Once dusk started to set in, we busted out the abundance of fireworks that Chris's parents and our friends had brought over. We began with sparklers which apparently are very scary for Brenson and Chloe Jo. Brianna was the only one that wanted anything to do with them! Bren's face is too much in these photos!

He was so concerned and kept those little hands over his mouth the whole time.

He finally decided to carry one around, but only under the condition that it stayed un-lit.

Brianna and I had a ball with them!

Finally, the adults decided that we would play with the sparklers. Forget the kiddos!

Lisa and Tia:

My sweet girl.

Once we started firing off the "bigger" stuff, Meme took the kids to the porch to be out of harm's way. The girls enjoyed the fireworks, but Bren was not impressed.

We live just outside city limits (by about 1 mile), so that's how we were able to shoot off anything we wanted. We also live in a cul-de-sac, so Ross, Russ, and Chris took all of our fireworks to the cul-de-sac and shot them off. We had some really beautiful stuff! And the rest of us were happy because they were far enough away that we weren't in danger :-).

It was the next day that we found out our fertility cycle had worked, but that our numbers were low and it didn't look hopeful. After all the stress of that began, I was even more thankful for such a wonderful evening. I hope we always take time to be thankful for our freedoms and our blessings in this country!