Happy 4th From Us to You!

For 3 years now, we have traveled to St. Mary's, GA for their parade. We love it! St. Mary's is typical small town America. Their parade consists of old tractors and cars. Police cars, trucks, and tanks. Firetrucks. Radio stations. Tae Kwon Do academies. Day cares. Music Studios. Knights of Columbus. Boy Scouts. There are no marching bands or anything else that would make you think typical parade. We love it. The neighbors drive their golf carts to Osteola Drive. Moms walk their babies in strollers. It makes me think of 1950's America!

After the parade, we returned home for necessary naps for all since we would not only be up VERY late, a certain unnamed 9 year old slept for a whopping 4 hrs the night before keeping said child's mother up. Once said child fell asleep, a certain 7 year old woke 1 hour and 33 minutes later followed by a certain 5 year old 25 minutes later. These unnamed children only allowed their mother to sleep from 4-5:33am - she was a tad cranky!

  After naps, we prepared to go see the Jacksonville Suns play the Chattanooga Lookouts! The final score was 3-0, Suns. So, it was a bit of a boring game! However, Daddy did catch a ball for the kiddos. Also, Grandma was able to join us! Father David was supposed to come, but there was an emergency at our parish, so he was unable.

After the game, Winn Dixie sponsored a huge fireworks show. Normally on Friday nights they will have fireworks, but this was about double what is normally done. The kiddos loved every single second!

After the game, Grandma, Daddy, and I grabbed a kiddo and headed to the van. We parked in the garage across from the field and arrived to our van at 10:30. We were finally exiting the garage at 11:05. Once out of the garage, all we saw were brake lights in all directions. There are only a handful of ways out of downtown Jacksonville and every single one was backed up. We had to go over the Matthew's Bridge and we could see that things were not moving at all. Finally, at 11:40 we were over the Matthew's bridge and headed towards Grandma's house. We dropped her off and were home shortly after midnight....

The kiddos were still on cloud nine from everything, but after a little night time routine aided and snuggles, all were out by 1am, quickly followed by Mommy and Daddy.

It was a wonderful 4th of July. I love the tradition we have began of attending the St. Mary's Parade in the morning. As we were driving home, Daddy and I agreed that this is something we always want to do - even when the kiddos are grown and we are called Granny and Papa!