Boom Boom Boom

With the craziness of our lives this past year, I have majorly neglected our blog. I sat down the other day and wrote a Kindergarten post about Carder (I needed to finish that baby before he was no longer a kindergartener). I was just going to post that and then work my way forward from there, and then go back and do catch up, but let's be honest, the catch up of the last year was never going to happen if I did that. So once again I am trying to recommit myself to blog catch up so that this thing is actually relevant :) 

My last post was about our road trip across the country. Our final stop was California. The kids were super excited to be at Mimi & Poppy's house. Once we got there we got to partake in all of the firework festivities (the town my parents live in does a birthday party for itself every year where there is a live band/fireworks; and then Fourth of July). As I reported last year in my 4th of July post, the fireworks didn't go over so well with Carder. Literally they brought him to hysteria because they "hurt his ears" so badly. I love fireworks, so I was determined to work our way through this. We got to the Murrieta birthday party just before dusk and set up camp. Carder was doing well with all the music, dancing/playing around with Jaxon and Brenn. Once it was announced that the fireworks would be starting soon he began to panic. I took him to the furthest away part of the park (where you could still see the fireworks) and we sat down and I told him that we could stay there until he got used to them. His hands came down from his ears, and we were slowly able to move our way up, finally making it back to our seats with the rest of the family. He made me hold my hands on his ears for a while while he sat on my lap, but pretty quickly decided that wasn't necessary and enjoyed the show like everyone else. He ended up loving fireworks that night (halleluja). When we were leaving we scored some sweet glow stick paraphernalia from a vendor closing up shop...Carder was pretty excited about the loot we scored. Just icing on the cake for making the fireworks a positive experience.

Jake was ahead of us walking back to the car with Brenn. Once we met up with them Carder shared his glow sticks with Brenn. He's such a great big brother.

With the Murrieta Birthday Party being such a success, the 4th of July was totally stress free. We did our annual swim day/BBQ then got ready to head out to Temecula for the firework show. 

The kids were quite excited about their dollar tree glow sticks Mimi gave them.

Brenn sure does love her Poppy and Jaxon

Brenn is our little dancing queen.  I guess its in her blood being born in Las Vegas and all. Ever since she was 6 months old I remember her moving her foot/leg to the music as we would watch So You Think You Can Dance. Ever since then when that little lady hers music she just cant help but move that little body of hers.

Brenn didn't have any issues with the booms of the fireworks, she just LOVED them. She would say "oooo sparkley" as they would go off in the sky.

As if the firework shows weren't enough, Mimi had plenty of sparklers and popper thingys for the kids to do when we got home (yes those would be Batman jammies that Brenn is wearing, she borrowed Jaxon's jammie shirt so she could be just like Carder).