Happy Fourth of July!

It's been a tradition on the Fourth of July to have some fun with sparklers, and tonight was no different than any other - here's a photo of Madison doing her best Statue of Liberty impression.  I love this picture - she was having fun with the sparklers tonight, and wanted to use them all up - and there were quite a few.  Daddy thought about it towards the end, and that's when we started to get creative:  this next shot is pretty cool.

This is Daddy and Madison running around a tree with sparklers - we left the shutter open for a neat effect.  We actually did several variations of this, but to be honest, it was just plain fun running around with sparklers, barefoot in the front yard.  The entire time, you could hear the boom-crackle-boom of the Fourth of July all around us.  It was as if we were in some sort of battle zone!  It sounded amazing though, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  Tonight we've been looking at everyone else's photos of the evening and it was simply a splendid night for all.

So, what did we do during the day, you ask?  We had a luau!

Yep, it was time for Luau 2012!  Earlier this afternoon, we made our way to Ye-Ye and Nana's for the annual Luau, and this one was a ton of fun.  Part of the reason is we decided to put a few birthday celebrations in there for good measure.  Plus Father's Day.  Yeah, we had some catching up to do.  Still, it was a lot of fun:  first we started with the food.  And this food was absolutely delicious.  It all had a Hawaiian flair to it, and the chicken was so good it was hard to stop.  But there was plenty of other food as well, including Mommy's trifle that she made:

Yes, this is unbelievably good.  Trust me on that one.  It's a patriotic trifle (which would be a great name for a rock band), and it was absolutely scrumptious!

After the food came the presents, where Madison continued her campaign of collecting lots of good stuff - today's highlight was a game of Chutes and Ladders, featuring Disney Princesses.  You'll be seeing more of that on these pages later, I'm sure.  Tonight before bedtime, we played it a few times.  Daddy got whooped!

But one game that Daddy did well in was croquet.  It was a pretty epic comeback, and all of us had fun trying it out.  Madison was getting better as the game went on, occasionally whacking that ball pretty far for a little girl her size!  Also, we played an odd version of volleyball, which is clearly not regulation volleyball (as you can see from the picture above!).

Ye-Ye and Nana go all out for these events.  Atmosphere is fantastic and decorations are everywhere.  This year, they even made cardboard tikis all over the place - these were pretty funny looking.  We had limbo set up, and played some bocce ball too.  All the while, Hawaiian music filled the air - and then the madness started!  We began with the traditional water balloon toss, where we pass water balloons in the air from one team to the next, each team consisting of two players and a towel.  Madison really loved this.  And afterwards, it was an all out squirt gun fight, with sponges and hoses and all kinds of craziness!

Madison was lugging around this huge, heavy squirt gun and doing her best impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Of course, everyone got soaked.  Water balloons were flying, sponges were launched, and squirt guns were hosing down anyone still standing.  It was a lot of fun!

We always have such a good time over at their house - and in fact, tomorrow we'll probably be back for a bit.  Mommy and Daddy might go see a movie with the nephews, and while that happens Madison will be spending time with Hannah, who she adores.  So the fun keeps going on tomorrow.  But looking back on this incredibly full day, I think we had enough fun to last a week!