4th of July Celebrations

This past holiday weekend was a 4 day weekend for both Dennis and I and we made it an amazing one! 

Before moving back, I came home nearly every 4th of July weekend for as long as I can remember because my nieces birthday falls on the 7th and the 4th of July usually guarantees a great river weekend!  You can read all about last year's festivities here. 

We kicked off our weekend on Friday night with dinner and drinks at my parents house to celebrate my first week of work. My dad built a sandbox for the kids and they were in heaven!

On Saturday morning, Dennis had to work so I packed up everything I thought we could possibly need for an afternoon and evening on the river. Some great family friends have a beautiful cabin that they invited us to for a huge party they throw every year. I baked some chocolate chip cookie bars for the potluck dinner and had the boys sufficiently lathered in sunscreen and in their swim trunks by the time Dennis got off work. We drove out to the cabin and within minutes we were loaded up on the pontoon heading to the sandbar. Duke really enjoyed the boat ride, but hated the waves the boats made when they drove by the sandbars. We had an amazing afternoon playing in the sand and water, getting sufficiently sun kissed, and introducing Theo to the river life. He was an absolute champ and hung out safely in the shade smiling away and dozing on and off. We headed back later in the evening for dinner and fireworks and then loaded up our crew to get everyone in bed way past their bedtime.

We all slept in on Sunday morning and had a very lazy start to our day. We took the boys to the pool in the afternoon with my parents and finally got Duke to warm up to it! My mom had him going down the slides and turning all of the sprayers on and off over and over again.

On Monday, Dennis and I dropped the boys off at daycare and had the entire day to ourselves! It was absolutely amazing. We went to brunch, hit a bucket of balls at the golf course and saw a movie before scooping up our babies at the end of the day. We talked in complete sentences, dreamed a little about future plans and laughed a lot. Just enjoying each other's company without distraction for an entire day was pure perfection and hard to come these days. For those curious, we saw Wonder Woman and I honestly loved it! I enjoy most super hero movies but after hearing a ton of good reviews on this one, I really wanted to see it in theaters and I'm so glad we did!

On Tuesday we were ready for all things red, white, and blue. We had another day at the river planned so we packed things up, made a liquor store run and hit the road as soon as Duke woke up from his nap. By this point in the weekend he was practically putting on his floatie himself on his way to the water! We spent hours soaking up the sun, drinking plenty and enjoying time with my amazing cousin who took all of us and our stuff around on the boat and gave us free reign of her beautiful little river cabin!  One of my favorite parts about the river is you never know who you are going to run into you on the sandbar, but you are guaranteed to run into lots of friends and for us, lots of family. They had a huge tarp turned into a slip n slide down the sandbar into the river and I gave it a go once...I may or may not have bruised my tailbone but it was worth it. 

We opted to skip the fireworks because they freaked Duke out pretty bad on Saturday and headed home around 9 to bathe the babies and get them to bed. We have about 4 lbs of sand in our shower to prove it was a weekend well spent!  Hope you all had an equally wonderful 4th of July! 

-T-