July 4th

I love the 4th of July in Snoqualmie.   Before moving here, each year I wished we could spend the holiday in Utah where the holiday seemed to be better celebrated and offer much more fun.  Snoqualmie does it right though. 

Our community celebration started at 11am.  There's actually a parade beforehand, but we've never attended it.   As soon as we arrived the kids jumped in line for the new ziplining ride.   For the next TWO hours (ridiculous, right?) one of us held our spot in line while the kids enjoyed the activities with much, much quicker lines. 

Like the hamster balls:

It looks like Abigail’s operator was giving her a rough ride

Katie and I kicked around a beach ball while we waited.

Justin brought us a pizza while we continued to wait in line

Finally it was our turn for the zipline.  Abigail and Jason went down together.

And Carly was on her own

There was quite a jerk when you came to a stop at the end of the line.

Katie didn’t do a whole lot until after we’d finally finished with the zipline.  At first she wanted someone to go down the slides with her.

But then she was totally fine on her own.

Justin and Abigail raced through a bouncy toy.  Justin’s ability to completely hurdle an obstacle made him difficult to defeat.

The party wrapped up at 2pm, after we'd had our fill of hot dogs, pizza, cotton candy, popcorn, and soda pop, we headed home to rest up for the evening festivities.   Our neighborhood held its second annual get together that afternoon, but we opted to relax at home instead.   

That evening we joined several other families from church for a BBQ.   We spent the 4th two years ago at the same house.   There was tons of food, friends, and fireworks.   

There is a boy in our neighborhood that is always so sweet to Katie.   The two of them hung out together all evening.   He let her eat his chips and he helped her with the little kiddy fireworks... so cute! 

The fireworks were insane – they started shortly after 6pm and went until nearly 11pm.  There were fireworks for all ages to enjoy and participate in.   

Catching parachutes

After dark it was time for the big kids (adults) to play.   Huge, city sized fireworks.  And what makes the evening even more amazing is that neighborhoods all over the community were doing the same thing so every where you looked there was a firework show.  A new attraction this year were big paper lanterns,  they were so cool to see floating up high in the night sky. 

Drew slept through the whole evening, less a few minutes for him to eat and get his diaper changed. 

Mid way through the big stuff Katie came over and curled up on Justin's lap.   Within minutes she was sound asleep.  She even stayed asleep when Justin set her down to get all our stuff loaded up afterward.