First Smiles

Since last week, she has been smiling at us!!! Not the accidental smiles, but the real ones. You have to work to get them, but she is so darned cute when she does it. Sometimes it's a full smile, sometimes it's just a half one. But whichever one it is, they all are just precious!

We went to the fireworks last night. We had it all planned out, didn't want to go to the fireworks our own town, because they changed the location to our Green, which is small and I figured would be too crowded and too close to traffic. So we were going to go to a neighboring town, just like we did last year, where they have a huge field, with lots of space to run around. Spent the day kind of getting ready, getting stuff to eat, making sure our meals were in time to leave early, stuff like that.

Around 6:30pm, it was time to leave, the kids were very excited, had been asking the whole day whether we were going yet. We got every one in the van, drove to the neighboring town and wondered why there hardly was any traffic. That's unusual. We looked at each other, looked at the lack of people, and drove around for a bit. Found a sign telling us about the fireworks / barbeque on July SECOND! As a foreigner, I had expected that July 4th fireworks would be on the FOURTH of July, silly me...

What to do? A car full of excited kids, but no fireworks to be watched? I should have checked the newspaper in advance, but I really did not expect them to do the fireworks on a different day. I know that another neighboring town had them on July 3rd, but I figured that they did that because they are a small town, and it might be cheaper to have them a day in advance...

We decided to check out the fireworks in our own town anyway, maybe they were able to read the calendar here? And maybe it wouldn't be as crowded as I had feared? I kept thinking that our town might have been celebrating a different day too, and what to do if that turned out to be the case.

Phew, the closer we came to our Green, the more cars and pedestrians we saw. That was a good sign. Lots of people at the Green, hayrides, music, this looked good! Lots of cars too though, with a resulting lack of parking spots. I decided to drive a bit farther, to our local health club. They have a small playground, and lots of parking space. And it was really quiet there, just a few families. Perfect spot to wait for the firewalks, and only a 5 minutes walk away from the Green.

I was so relieved that we didn't miss these fireworks too. The kids played at the playground, we ate at the picnic table, they all ran around, and the best thing was that we figured out that we should be able to see the fireworks from here too. So close to fireworks time, we spread out a blanket and waited for the show. The kids kept running to some nearby bushes and pretending that there was a huge monster there, trying to get them. It was nice to have the space to do that, and tp not have a few thousand people around us. The fireworks were great, the kids enjoyed them, although Sylvia mostly nursed and fussed through them. The traffic going back home wasn't too bad, so it all worked out in the end. But I sure was visualizing a bunch of very disappointed kids when I feared that we might end up not being able to see any fireworks.

Today we only had gymnastics, so it was a nice and quiet day. Not only that, but it rained, so that was good for the garden, even although it meant that I didn't get around to take my morning walk. I didn't get around to my nap either, and I have to admit that my midwife might be right and I might be a bit exhausted, which wouldn't help with the not sinking into depression. I am fine as long as I run around and do things, cleaning up, decluttering, cooking, whatever. I am not as fine when I sit down and actually can feel that I am tired and teary. I hate to admit that I might need rest though, it just doesn't fit in my lifestyle LOL.

Today, I also found out that the due date for our property taxes wasn't after the fourth of July, like I seemed to remember. It turned out to be July 1st instead... Oops! Went to city hall to try to pay them, but they were closed! Oh well, yet another task to accomplish tomorrow.

We are all enjoying one of her first smiles