4th of July Celebrations!!

We had a weekend full of fun festivities that included many celebrations. On Friday, we headed over to our neighbor Jackson's house for his big 2nd birthday party! Grace and Jackson have become quite the little buddies this summer and she VERY excited to sing Happy Birthday to him as soon as we walked in the door!

Erica made the cutest frog cake and little cupcakes with toy frogs for the kids. Grace inhaled her cupcake in a matter of seconds while Matt watched with horror as she took each bite of blue icing! HAHA!


On Saturday morning, we headed to the Farragut parade with Andy, Erica, and Jackson. We're used to the good ol' Linton parade back home that has several bands, the Shriners riding their little motorcycles (or whatever you want to call them), and lots of ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. This parade was A BIT more low key. BUT Grace had fun nonetheless. She got to see Elmo, Mickey Mouse, and dance while the Farragut band marched down the street. The parade got even better when she got ahold of some "candies." Yep, she definitely gets that honest! :) We got pretty lucky with the weather. The sun stayed behind the clouds for most of the parade so, thankfully, it wasn't a sweatbox the entire time! When you're 37 weeks pregnant, you tend to get hot PRETTY QUICKLY!! Saturday evening Grace had her first experience with fireworks. I bought some while Grace napped, and Matt and I were dying to try some out. Grace does not like loud noises and will cling to me asking to be held if something startles her. So, needless to say, we weren't sure how well she would do. We tried the box of snap dragons........and she LOVED them. She was cracking up at every one that popped on the ground! YAY!! We got a short video of her that I'll post a little later.

On Sunday morning, Matt, Grace, and I became official members of our church that we've been attending for some time. We were called up to the front of the church where Matt gave a lengthy speech to which he received a standing ovation...........WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I DON'T THINK SO!!! For those of you who don't know, Matt wouldn't talk at our wedding so a speech in front of our church congregation was completely out of the question! Love you, dear! But that just made me laugh out loud! In all seriousness, we are very excited to have found our church home here in Knoxville and we are looking forward to getting more involved, meeting new people, and building new relationships.

After Grace's nap, we decided to go for a swim since it was a cool 175 degrees outside! Grace swam on her tummy for the first time and she is getting more and more comfortable with the water each time we go! Later that evening, we had some neighbors come over for our FIREWORKS EXTRAVAGANZA!! Keep in mind this included a few smoke bombs, some small bursts of light, and a couple boxes of sparklers! HAHAHAHA! Our neighbor, Audrey, grabbed a sparkler without any hesitation. It took Grace a bit longer to get comfortable with them, but she was asking for "more, more" by the time they were gone! Luckily, Grace wasn't up until all hours of the night due to fireworks and chaos going off all around our neighborhood. Everyone seemed to be fairly tame and quiet and for that I would like to say, THANK YOU!!

On Monday, we chilled out around the house, had a cookout that was delicious, ate lots of popsicles, and got caught up on some things around the house. Ahhhhh summer!

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!!

Check out those boots!!!