4th of July

Sometimes on a "day off" Josh and I pretend we're hermits and just want to stay home doing nothing all day long.

And that's when I worry about Tommy's knowledge of holidays.

What if he goes to school and finds out that on Christmas morning you're supposed to open ALL of your presents and not just however-many-you-can-open-before-mom-&-dad-get-bored and put the rest away for future gifts?

What if he's in high school before he knows that there is a holiday in the summer where you light stuff on fire?

What if he's married and his wife tells him there's a whole holiday where he's supposed to buy her stuff because he loves her?

He'll probably be permanently scarred from all the pinching that will go on before I teach him about wearing green for St. Patrick.

Bottom line: I'm naturally a holiday slacker.

So yesterday I tried to repent.

I dragged Josh to a parade in Clearfield in the morning. Josh does not love parades. Or salt water taffy. But Josh does love Tommy. And me. 


I love this picture because sometimes I think that Josh & Tommy's brains are linked. And sometimes the things in Josh's brain come out in Tommy's face. Like this:

"K mom. We're at the parade. We're smiling. You took a picture for the blog. Can we go home now?"

But that parade is where we earned our candy for the day. We brought home enough taffy to last us until New Year's at which point we'll throw out the leftovers because we're gonna eat salad every day for the rest of our lives. Or at least until Josh's birthday on Jan 2nd.

It only took 2 firetrucks before Tommy figured out that cheering = candy. And that candy = picking stuff up off the street and eating it. But then he got tired, this is his 'lazy clap'.

After naps (and a bit of a boring afternoon) I convinced Josh to go to Sandy for the festivities there.

So we watched another (better) parade with significantly less candy due to the small crowd of 7-16 year olds standing right in front of us.

The parade is where we learned that Tommy can and will drink the whole backpack of water without ever stopping to breath - or share. Rude!

This is also where we learned that his mother is just selfish enough to snatch it out of his mouth, put him up high where he can't reach it and take the rest of the water for herself. And NBE - cut me some slack.

Afterward we wandered around the booths, which is how we learned that a cup of ketchup and a snowie is a perfectly acceptable dinner for a little boy who is already full of taffy.

And then we sat down and waited for the concerts.

The concerts were lovely. The firework show made Josh say "I'm so glad we came, these are amazing!" no less than 20 times before we even left.

Plus Tommy thought they were cool enough to keep him from having a complete meltdown even though it was hours past bedtime.

THAT my friends, is what we call holiday success.