4th of July

Mark is going to Philmont in a few weeks where he will be hiking about 80 miles in 10 days. So today he decided to do a practice hike at 5:30 a.m. so it would be a little cooler. He invited the whole family to go and Maddie & Reagan were the only takers. They walked through our subdivision and over to a park by our house which has some trails. Mark wore a backpack, but the girls didn't.I woke up to this sight of my little hikers taking a nap on the couch. Later in the day, Marissa asked Reagan if it was fun and she said it was. Marissa then asked her if she would want to do again tomorrow and she said "no". Those are the exact responses that I would have expected out of Reagan. She does great hiking and enjoys it at the time, but when she's done she isn't anxious to do it again right away.
Maddie, Morgan and Reagan in their 4th of July attire. Over the years, decorating t-shirts has been a favorite activity at our house. We've decorated lots of t-shirts in lots of different ways, but I must say that I may have found the best way yet. We decorated these shirts using regular spray paint. For the stars, we cut stars from freezer paper and ironed them on before spray painting the shirts. They were quick and easy and turned out great! We washed one with a color catcher and no color even came off of them. The back of Maddie's shirt was a little stiff because I had gone in the house and didn't realize how thick she was spraying it on. The other shirts weren't even stiff and none of them smelled like paint fumes. We will definitely be buying some more colors of spray paint for the future!
A close-up view of Maddie with the 4th of July headband we made.
When Rob saw us cutting out stars from freezer paper, he came up with his own idea. He printed off a picture of Jose Reyes and cut that out of freezer paper. The orange shirt we had on hand is a bit small, but it worked for today!!

I absolutely love watching the fireworks from my driveway on the 4th of July. It is incredible to me how large the fireworks are that people can set off from their house. It is so fun to watch the fireworks going off all over the neighborhood. I took a few pictures, but none were worth posting. In the future, I will have to learn to be a better fireworks photographer.