The Fourth

Happy belated Fourth of July! I hope your holiday weekend was as beautiful as ours--the weather was absolutely perfect. This was even more appreciated after the terrible weather month that was June.

We both had Friday off, so we took Charlotte to the carnival down the street. Unfortunately, due to the 10" of rain we'd gotten in the previous two weeks, they couldn't set the rides up in the grassy park area where they usually do and instead had to take over the entire parking lot. Normally this would be fine, since we'd be riding bikes up there. This year it was a little tricky given my inability to ride a bike at this point (Chad offered to let me ride in the bike cart with Charlotte but I declined). It's not a super far walk--just about a mile or so--but I didn't want to walk all the way there and then end up being too tired to walk all the way back. So we compromised, parked at the beach about 1/4 of a mile away, and walked from there. Win win.

The highlight of the carnival was seeing the princesses:

I thought that was a cute idea and the girls who dressed up were so nice. They stopped and took time to talk to and take pictures with every kid who wanted to see them.

The next day Charlotte got to go to a different carnival with my parents, and that evening we had a small cookout. We let her stay up to watch fireworks, so around 9:45 we walked up to the lake to see what we could see. We ended up walking all the way up to the beach (after my insistence that we not do that since it was too far, but then we just sort of ended up there. Which I suppose is for the best, since maybe all this walking will get this baby out). She made it through almost all of the show, until the finale when she announced it was time to go home.

It was one of those weekends we didn't want to end--it was quiet, we didn't have a bunch of places to go, and we were able to be outside almost the whole time. And pie. We had lots of really good pie.

Each weekend spent as a family of three at this point could easily be our last, so that makes it even more special that we were able to enjoy this one as much as we did. We are all very much ready to be a family of four--Charlotte asks multiple times a day where her baby sister is and why she's still hanging out in Mommy's belly. Good question my dear, I often find myself wondering the same thing. Patience...

~Stacy