Independence Day

I hope everyone out there in the internet had a wonderful Fourth!  Ours ended up being quite pleasant indeed!

It's hard for me to believe that this was just one year ago:

Ruby spent most of her first Fourth being a crank-pot, but this year was much different!  We started off the morning by sleeping in (yes!), then chowing down on some red velvet pancakes with whipped cream and blueberries.  Turns out, my kid is weird and doesn't really like whipped cream (the dog, on the other hand, comes running whenever she hears the sound of it)!

After breakfast, we donned our red, white, and blue, and headed into town for the parade and Heritage Day festivities.  There were a ton of people there, but we miraculously found both a good parking spot, and a good place to watch the parade.

Waiting for the parade to start.

Here they come!

"Where are they going?"

The parade was mostly dressed up kids and dogs.  Which was actually pretty awesome.  =)  The town mayor rolled by, and some local businesses handed out coupons and things.  My favorite part of the parade was the swag from Booginhead, whose headquarters are located in our town.  They were handing out Sippigrips!  I've been meaning to buy one of those forever now (we had, and loved the Pacigrip), so I was super excited to try that puppy right out.  It held onto Ruby's red and blue sippy like a champ.  Love it!

Sammy the Salmon

Also in the parade, was Sammy the Salmon.  Our town has a big salmon spawning creek and fish hatchery, so salmon are a big deal (we have a huge "Salmon Days" festival in the fall).  Sammy made Mr. G and I both have the urge to do the Salmon Dance...

Additionally, the parade was a veritable rainstorm of candy.  Seriously, the kids on the sidelines made out like bandits.  We even let Ruby have her first taste.  Yes, me, the mom who tries to buy only organic and avoids processed foods for my girl, let her have a bright neon blue raspberry Dum-Dum.

She liked it, of course, and sucked on it for a good while while watching the parade.  Then handed it off to Mr. G and was done with it.  Barely any was gone.  I was secretly happy, but hey, it was a holiday, gotta let the kid live a little, right?

So many doggies, Ruby was in heaven!

Mr. G has decided Ruby will be getting one of these for her next birthday...

She did a great job waving her grand ol' flag.  Ok, so maybe she wanted to wave it in her daddy's face...

He showed her how it was done.

And soon, the parade was over.  I could tell Ruby was pretty tired (we skipped nap, since the parade started at 11), but she was hanging in there.  We wanted to check out what was going on in the park before we left.

"I need my nap, Mommy."

It was kind of nuts, tons of people in a little park.  I didn't take pics of this, but there were booths, free pony rides (the line was insane!), and supposedly a slug race (?) and pie eating contest.  We didn't see either of those, but we did stop by a food truck to grab some pulled pork sliders and smoked potato salad for lunch.  While we ate, Ruby kicked her feet in time to the music of a local band.  She was still pretty tired, so after that, we headed back home for her nap.

After nap, the sun was out!  This is HUGE for us Washingtonians.  There's a standing joke around here that summer starts on July 5th.  I had more rained-out 4ths growing up than not.  So a warm, sunny, Fourth of July?  Amazing.  Ruby's had two in a row.  She better not get used to it!

I cleaned up the water table (whose idea was it to not provide a cover for these things?), and the little one went to town with her ducks.

She also requested that I blow bubbles for her, and I was happy to oblige.  The girlie had so much fun splashing, that she eventually soaked herself, so we traded romper for swim suit.

And of course, once properly attired, left the water table completely to go make a mess in her tent.

Why, yes, she did steal the dog's toy...

The rest of the evening was spent eating BBQ chicken and corn on the cob.  Lets just say, Ruby is a huge fan of BBQ sauce... (translation, it ended up all in her hair).  We also took a walk around our oddly quiet neighborhood, before washing the aforementioned sauce, and attempting to put the wee one to bed.

I say attempting, because, well, she didn't exactly go to bed.  Between cutting a lot of teeth and some really killer separation anxiety, Ruby's had some nights here and there where even the mention of "ninights" makes her completely lose it.  So she spent a couple of teary hours with me in my bed, before finally passing out for the night.  Which meant I didn't get to see any fireworks (sad).  They're illegal here, but certain 'hoods are allowed to do them over the lakes, which you can usually see out our window.  Of course, we had some law-breaking neighbors, but luckily, thanks to being curled up next to me, Ruby didn't seem to mind them at all.  She slept like a baby until 7:30am.  Oh, and she didn't mind that I appeased myself by watching the Walking Dead marathon, either!

All in all, not too shabby a 4th at all.  We're already looking forward to next year.  We'll definitely be doing the hometown parade again, and Ruby should be old enough to see the rocket's red glare!