Our fun Fourth of July weekend

Our Fourth of July week kicked off with finally agreeing on a paint color for our entry way/main flowing area. Hooray! Before we had time to change our minds, I went out and bought the paint and started the cutting in. Before and afters to follow in another post. I just had to say how excited I am that after months and MONTHS of having paint squares painted on the wall and spending way too much money on paint samples, we finally made a decision.

Now on to the good stuff. My dad drove over on Friday and spent the day with us. We started by attending our ward's pancake breakfast and flag-raising ceremony at the church. Then we prepared a picnic and took it to Belle Isle where we found a picnic table for lunch and then let the kids play in the water (next time we'll bring bathing suits) and Dan swam around a little bit.

The weather was PERFECT. Not too humid, nice when we got there, started getting pretty hot right when we were leaving. Just perfect.

We came home for nap/quiet time and then went out to dinner. We came home for a patriotic trifle dessert and then Dad headed back to C-ville. It was fun to have him spend the day with us!

Saturday we went to the DC temple. It was another gorgeous day. I decided to bring along my nice camera and try to take some pictures.

Such a beautiful, peaceful place. You kind of forget that when it takes you three hours to get home...

We had promised the kids we'd take them to fireworks, which were held on the 5th for some reason. So we did what we did last year - we went to Dan's work parking garage to watch them from the top level. Except this year, his building allowed the general public to park there also, which made it way more crowded. We'll think of something different for next year.

The fireworks were great, though. They even had fireworks that spelled out "U" "S" "A". We'd never seen that before. All in all, a really great 4th weekend!

Catching Fireflies

One of the perks of living in Virginia is being able to show the kids fireflies. They loved catching them on their hands and watching them for a few moments before they flew away.