Independance Day

There's nothing like watching the awe on a child's face to reignite your zest for life. This past 4th of July was one of those occasions. Ariana slept through the fireworks display of her first Independance day which is better than being scared!

I think I will regret forever the lack of pictures of her face during the fireworks this year. We had been grabbing a few things and were almost back to our hotel when we saw them going off in the distance on either side of our car. Ariana started shouting oooh's and wow's from her carseat squealing with delight every time another BOOM sounded as an explosion of colors rained down from the sky.

We parallel parked and jumped out of the car with Ariana up on Marty's shoulder. We had to rush through a few blocks to find a tree free view of the sky. We didn't want to drive the rest of the way to the peir where my Mom was with the foster kids. THAT would have been quite a sight since the peir is where they were setting them off from!

I watched Ariana's face with tears in my eyes. I could hear the thundering clap of the fireworks behind me but experienced the lights and colors as they danced across her wide-eyed face. I think her mouth stayed slightly ajar from the time we got out of the car, until after the grand finale. She clapped and asked everyone around us for "more lights please?" Ariana's heaven will include nightly fireworks shows, I'm sure!

After a while I offered to hoist Ariana onto my shoulder since Marty was getting upset he couldn't see her face. I didn't watch his face but I'm sure by the way his laughter cracked in the middle that he had identical tears in his eyes.

We took pictures in our matching shirts seperately. After hours upon hours of walking around in downtown St. Petersburg in the heat and the rain I was too exhusted (as you will see in the pictures) to find the auto set function on my camera. It was halloween all over again!








We tried to beat the crowds and wait to have a beach day until Monday the 5th. But I guess to be fair we couldn't have a perfect weekend and traded out crowds for it being rainy and overcast all day.

This is how Miss Free started out:



And this is how she ended up. In 3 minutes flat.