Our 4th on July the 4th

My bathing beauties and I

The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. It brings back fond memories of cookouts at my Aunt Nancy and Uncle George's house, playing in their metal pool, as well as going to the VP Fair in St. Louis (now named Fair St. Louis) and maybe even seeing a parade. Of course, my favorite part was the end of the evening watching the fireworks.

Four years ago, the 4th took on a whole new special meaning for me. On that day, in 2009, I married my best friend, Chris. It took me a long time to find "the One," and I couldn't wait to be married to him. Saying yes was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.

In the past four years since we've been married, we have bought a house, gone through 5 pregnancies, had two beautiful daughters, dealt with family drama, attended the funeral of my fantastic and fabulous Aunt Nancy, traveled quite a bit to visit friends and family, and even, just recently, bought a minivan.  We've been busy.

Each year, I look forward to another 4th of July, another anniversary to celebrate. My husband's job as a meteorologist for the NWS does have a tendency to limit our celebrations since it is likely he will have to work on the holiday. In fact, the last time he had the holiday off was in 2011 (oh, and the only reason he had it off in 2009 was because he requested it off). We don't let his schedule stop our celebrations, but it usually means we don't go to see fireworks.

This year, my wonderful DH actually had the 4th off, kind of. (I'll explain the "kind of" in a bit.) We all slept in until 8 a.m., a shocking, yet pleasant surprise. My husband and I exchanged cards in the morning, but no gifts. When we discovered that the traditional gift for the 4th is flowers, we figured we'd come up with something different. And we did. We gave each other an ice cream maker attachment for our KitchenAid Stand Mixer. I can't wait for it to arrive so I can try it out.

After breakfast with our girls, we hung out in our living room watching them play while we relaxed. I had hoped to take Ginny and Grace to see a parade, but there were none near me. That shocked me. I'm used to there being parades wherever I have lived on the 4th. So, my girls had fun playing instead. Who knows, they may have preferred that anyway. Then we made our way out to lunch. Of course, our fave place to eat, a local place called Darcy's Pint, was closed for the holiday (good for them) so we ended up eating at Chili's.

Playing in the pool

We got home, put our children down for their naps and watched baseball. Once our girls woke from their naps, we went to play in the back yard. I had recently bought a wading pool. So the girls and I played in the pool for 15 to 20 minutes. We might have stayed out longer, but I didn't want my little red-head, my baby, to get too much sun.

Ginny kicking back in the mini-tent I got for the girls.

DH and I got the girls dried off and rediapered and headed back inside, out of the sun. Ginny was greatly disappointed at the prospect of returning inside. She wanted to continue playing outside and in the pool! I let her know we would play in there again someday soon. I don't think her two-year-old mind was able to grasp that because she wanted to go out "now". She cried and threw a fit in classic toddler style. What aggravated things more is that DH went back outside to grill. Ginny felt she should be outside with Daddy too. He tried allowing her to be with him, but she was desperate to get off the deck and back into the wading pool, so she was sent inside. Luckily, it didn't take long for my husband to grill up the steaks for dinner. We ate and enjoyed our meal together as a family.

Soon after dinner, though, our day came to an end. As soon as our girls were sleeping, Chris said goodnight to me as he headed to bed. Last night/this morning, he started a string of seven Midnight to 8 a.m. shifts. He needed to take a nap before leaving for his first shift. So, although he did have our anniversary off, it was only in part. Oh well. Maybe next year. Until then, I really enjoyed our day as a family and celebrating my time married to my awesome spouse!