How I Spent My Fourth of July

How I spent My Fourth of July

A Photo Essay by: Katie McPhee

I started the day by scrambling to find 4th of July-appropriate clothes for my kids.  I always skip over the cutesy holiday-themed clothes at the store only to find myself wanting to dress my kids up the day of! ha. I guess I should learn. Then I had to take the traditional "Happy Independence Day" picture of the kids.  Now, this is no small feat with a toddler; add in an infant and you have a recipe for hilarious outtakes!

Close enough: one kid is smiling.  Mission accomplished! 

Outtake: When she's done, she's DONE.
We're working on things like "don't throw brother when you're done holding him" right now. 

It was also Malcolm's two month birthday, so I had to take the token shot of him.  This was also filled with digging around for pictures of Lucy on her two month birthday to compare.  Turns out I didn't think this was something worth photographing, but I did have some horribly lit videos.  I managed to snap photos of Mal, but skipped the video.  He coos.  He smiles.  He drools.  It's adorable, but makes for a very slow video as he does none of these things on command.  

A word on this flag: I got this flag when we drove to southern Georgia to surprise Seth when he returned home from his second deployment (to Iraq).  It's a great reminder to me of the sacrifice of many (all gave some, some gave all), who keep our nation free. 

Naturally big sister had to photobomb! 

 Naps were taken.

Naturally there were naps.  This guy is a sleeping champ! 

Daddy felt sparklers were in order.  Perhaps we should have warned our child that she'd be holding a stick of fire, and that sparks would shoot off of it (hence "sparkler"), but we didn't. We stuck that stick in her hand, lit it, and laughed at the look of shock and utter terror that flickered across her face, good parents that we are! 

"Hey, this will be so fun!"

The smile before she realizes what she's holding. 

And there it is!  Probably should have warned her. 

Okay, maybe I can do this... 

Nope, still terrifying after all. 

She'd rather take care of brother than play with sparklers 

She sort of warmed up to them after a while. 

She got smart and wouldn't hold them any more. 

Still pretty unsure. Had to hold onto dad for reassurance. 

I stopped to capture the magnificence that is the hydrangea in front of our mailboxes. 

Then berry-picking was in order.  Blackberries.  On the fourth of July.  Tons of them.  Let that sink in for a moment.

A blackberry crisp was concocted by my wonderful husband (no photos because we dug right in), and we settled in and prayed our children slept through the explosions going off all around our home.  I'm not going to lie, we contemplated being "those people" that called the cops to report the illegal fireworks (they're banned in Renton), but turns out our kiddos slept right through, so we avoided crotchety neighbor status for another year.