Our Lil' Sparkler!

First sparkler - kind of scared!

Rachel was more excited about Fourth of July than she was about Christmas! She woke me up early asking to put on her "July" outfit that Grammy had made her. So we got her all decked out early in the day. We spent most of the day at home and Rachel and Matt took a long hike in the woods behind our house. We headed out for a quick supper and found that most restaurants close on the 4th! Who knew? But we found some food (heaven forbid mommy cooks on a Saturday evening!) and then headed home. While we were waiting for it to get dark, we baked some very patriotic cupcakes and just finished them up as the fireworks started. We had decided to chance it and see if there would be fireworks in our neighborhood, instead of joining the crowds someplace else. We were lucky and had a great show! A couple of different neighbors very close to our house gave us a great fireworks display (seriously, how much money do these people spend on fireworks????). Rachel hopped on her scooter and we walked the "loop" that makes up our street. We would stop every few seconds to watch more fireworks and Rachel thought it was the best thing ever. She wheeled up the sidewalks yelling "Happy Fourth of July everybody!" and "Happy Birthday Country!". We had stopped on the way home earlier and picked up a couple of boxes of sparklers. I think this was Rachel's first sparkler experience! Her first sparkler was pretty scary for her, but she loved the second one and fourteen that followed. We did some of them before it got really dark and finished them up after the fireworks slowed down some. It was a late, late night, but Rachel loved every minute of it!