4th

A full and accurate accounting of The Family B's 4th of July, as told by Marie B, family matriarch.

We stayed in fabulous Las Vegas this year to celebrate our nations independence, mostly because it would have been a one day trip up to Utah and the children are still a little travel weary, and voted to just wait until next week to go up for the Utttte Staaaampede.

We started our day nice and early with a trip to Wally's to pick out a new bike for Katelyn so that she can learn to ride before she graduates from high school. We are way cool parents, though she had her doubts about our coolness, because she's pretty nervous about this learning curve.

As the Double B told her, we didn't learn to ride our bikes with all this safety gear back in days of yore!

Kaje and Liv went home but Benson came with us to ride his wiggle car at lightning speed and yell out encouragement like "power blaster activate!"

She definitely made progress but she still has a ways to go. I was proud of her for doing it in spite of her fear. There were a few tears but she kept trying, and that is courage, ladies and gentlemen. 

After that we took a little rest in the cool house and then headed out to lunch at PDQ (which stands for "pretty darn quick," if you didn't know. I didn't, and the Double B was truly shocked by this). Here's a lovely candid of my children, proving that this really did happen.

Donuts and watching 'National Treasure' followed. Then I took a little nap to cure a headache (it worked) and my children continued their binge watching of 'Gilmore Girls' before it was time to get food ready for our barbecue. Which was yummy.

The kids loved their little snapping fireworks but NO ONE could love them more then Benson. He went nuts with laughter every time he pulled one. Pretty entertaining.

We ended the night with a beautiful plan to go to Sonic for treats and head down to daddy's work to watch the Stratosphere light their fireworks. It almost worked, too. But Sonic was super slow and we got stopped at every single red light (which in Vegas, is a lot of red lights). So we saw a little of it from the car and by the time Daddy got Benson's chair out and Benson in it, it was over. Ha ha! What we saw was way cool, though. The kids were disappointed, but I reminded them that sometimes missing it makes a better story then making it! Plus they still got ice cream and still saw lots of really cool fireworks all across the valley on the drive. It really was cool.

Everyone fell into bed and that was the end of a really fun and full day. We are thankful for our freedoms and despite all that is going on in this troubled time, we are still proud to be Americans. 

The end.

And now, a few family quotes. Pulling out of the hotel parking lot last week, Benson said slowly "Momma... you are my best friend." 

Melted my heart.

A few days ago Katee and Benny were playing their pretend game. Kate said "Oh, baby baby baby" to Benson and he answered indignitly "No, I'm not a baby! I'm a KID!"

Message received.

We were window shopping to get ideas for Katelyn's upcoming birthday. She excitedly held up a bottle of glue. I asked her if she really wanted glue? She answered "Glue. Glue is my favorite. I need tape and glue, every day." 

I thought that was darn cute and kinda perfect. She also wants sticky notes. Cute. That's just cute.