happy 4th of july!

Our 4th of July started off with a KABOOM literally. We decided to try and beat the heat and go for a quick walk at 7:30am to the Botanical Gardens. I had been noticing for some time that Ethan was kind of walking funny and when we took him out of the stroller to walk we really noticed it. I realized that the reason he was walking so funny was because his shoes were too small! So as Pete and I were discussing this, and trying to get Eloise to stop screaming -- BAM! Ethan fell and hit the pavement, mouth and nose first. (A pretty rare phenomenon since he usually goes down forehead first). Bloody mouth, bloody nose. Now, a screaming toddler, who very bravely (or stubbornly) wanted to keep walking to go see the fish. We somehow manhandled our very strong toddler back into the stroller and worked on stopping the bleeding which was mainly coming from his mouth/lip which was now swollen.

We high tailed it out of the gardens and back home with Ethan screaming at the top of his lungs while Eloise -- we think so startled by her brother's volume-- finally settled down. Once we got home we tried to ice his fat lip (no go) and then headed out to buy Ethan some new shoes.

We had his foot measured at Payless to make sure we got the right size and ---- he is a size 9/9 1/2! Our poor boy had been smashing his (rather large) toes into size a size 8! Let's just say this mama felt awful! So, we got him a couple pairs of new shoes and headed back home.

Later that day Auntie and Uncle Russell and Ella came over for a BBQ. We even somehow managed to take a few pictures of all the kiddos together. I think I like Ella's expression the most.

Things quickly went south in our photo session.

And, then we were done.

With two young kiddos and 100+ degree temps we definitely were not brave enough to try any fireworks. Before bed we snapped a few pics of our precious two. Ethan was mostly too preoccupied to actually look at the camera, but at least there was no crying!

Happy 4th of July!