Here's to the Red, White and Blue!

It's that time of year again - the nation's birthday - and my most dreaded holiday! The Fourth of July and I are frenimies... Don't get me wrong, I love my country and all that. What I don't particularly like is that we have day that gives abnoxious Americans license to blow things up until all hours of the night for fun. It wasn't always that way. There was a time that I loved this great excuse for a bbq - all the food and friends. When we lived in SoCal, you did the Fourth right - bbq and hang out and then go down to the beach to watch a great fireworks show. See fireworks are illegal in San Diego. Here in Oregon, however, not only are they not illegal, they have a roadside stand every 15 feet encouraging people to burn their money. Our current neighborhood is better than N. Portland - there, we could expect fireworks going for 2 weeks before, 2 weeks after and usually until 2-3am. Here in suburbia, we are tame - but the show still goes on until 11 or 12 and generally keeps both my kids awake - and not one bit happy about it either.

Ok - enough of my soapbox rant... to mark the day, we had the Fernstroms over (Tim, Robin, Natalie and Nolan) for a traditional bbq. Abigail got dressed in her red white and blue and Caleigh enjoyed having another baby to join her in her "baby jail" for playtime... it was a really nice relaxing day... too bad we had to move a screaming Caleigh from her bedroom into a pack n' play in our closet around 11 pm b/c she was awake and not going back to sleep with the sound of Bagdad outside her window... ahhh, maybe next year we'll go to Sunriver for the week - I hear they ban fireworks there :)