4th of July

The 4th of July was a busy day. It started off with the annual Mayes Family Breakfast, which was good as always. Charlie was still up on the mountain fishing, and Sam had spent the night over at my parent's house with his cousins. They didn't make it on time due to some other incidents that happened the night before. After breakfast, I headed home to put Brett down for a nap and water and weed the garden. Not too long after that, Charlie came home, and we grabbed Sam and headed over to Charlie's parents house to light off some day time fireworks with his sister and her family. Sam didn't want to light any off. He was perfectly happy with Snappies.

 His cousins cheered him on to light some real fireworks.

 We finally convinced him to light off a parachute. That was the only thing he would light off.

 After a while, they were getting a little too daring for Sam to like, and Brett needed another nap, so we headed home for a while. We went over to my parent's house, where I was sure they would be daredevils :) Sam liked the sparklers, but it was still to light out to really see them.

Sam showed his cousins his parachute and they played with that for a while.

 Charlie and his family came over to light off the nighttime fireworks. The mosquitoes were pretty bad for a while, so Sam went inside to watch the fireworks. After the mosquitoes had calmed down, I finally convinced him to come outside to watch. He stayed out most of the night, but he still wouldn't light off any fireworks.

 Brett enjoyed it also. He refused to let anyone but me hold him for a really long time, which made it hard because Sam wanted to sit on my lap too. Eventually, my mom was able to take him without him screaming.

 Charlie was in charge of keeping the kids in order and helping them light the fireworks.

 Someone just around the corner was lighting off some pretty good fireworks. We occasionally had to stop and watch them.

The next day, the lit off some more fireworks in Byron. Gil wasn't able to come on the 4th. Sam was doing pretty good, but the mosquitoes were horrible. I took Brett home early. Charlie told me that Sam was having fun until one of the fountains fell over and shot out right under Sam's chair. It stunned him, but he was ok. Then at the end of the night, the kids were playing with sparklers, and the adults only had one more big firework left, so they lit it off. Sam was unaware that this was happening and freaked out at the big boom. He started running around because he wasn't sure where the firework was, and he didn't want it to hit him. Quinn started running after him, trying to calm him down, but she was holding a sparkler, and it scared him even more. He came home pretty exhausted and climbed right into bed. Poor guy. Maybe one of these years, we'll get him to actually enjoy fireworks.