Quick side note:
I could not get enough of this little man:
Adam and Whit's baby is 9 months old and seemed to get more adorable every time we looked at him. He didn't get as comfortable with me as I was hoping he would but he let me hang out with him a little bit here and there. I sure enjoyed watching each of his older siblings maul him with love in their own special way. S, the oldest, would just walk by his mom, pick up P with out a word and go play with him. R, the cousin Bundle's age, seemed to have it in her daily to-do list to pick up her baby brother and move him at least 27 - 38 times a day. Every few minutes: time to move the baby!
Okay, the 4th. I'll tell you, hanging out on Bainbridge Island is a great way to spend the holiday. It's really got a small-town feel (I guess that's because it IS a pretty small town, even though it seemed like a lot people came over from the mainland.) Our first order of business was to eat Whitley's super yummy breakfast. Right after that we piled the kids into the back of Adam's new cruiser - that is a fun island car to have for sure.
We headed into the downtown area - basically main street. We put the little kids into a kids race involving summersaults and crab walks and tunnel runs - it was cute. I especially enjoyed the way Bundle insisted on doing the whole thing in her cousin's galoshes, which I found out later were about 3 sizes too small. That must be the reason why she was seriously under-performing in the crab-walk portion of the race....
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| Rosie was seriously hilarious while trying to get her tiny body to go over her big noggin with every summersault.... |
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| The crab walking queen |
After the race we had some time to kill before the parade so what else were we supposed to do? Of course we went to Mora's! Best ice-cream on the planet. Troy and I got lavender ice-cream...oh gosh. It was so good. We're going to try to make some of our own one of these summer days in the near future.
After ice cream we walked around the town, hung out in trees, looked at flowers, visited a car show, ate a little snack and waited for the parade.
Finally it was parade time. Confession: I'm not a huge fan of parades. And this one was really really long. Really. But despite that, I really enjoyed seeing what this awesome little island had to offer, what groups are here, what the community is proud of. Each of Adam and Whit's kids were part of the parade - R was in a trailer with her little preschool group, L was supposed to be with her gymnastics gang but opted out at the last second, and S was with his roller hockey team. It was fun to see the two kids in the line up but there was some other great stuff too. One of my favorites was this group of grandpas pushing their walkers and wearing giant Groucho glasses. So funny.
S in his skating getup:
And I even got to hang out with baby P for a good chunk of the show:
I think there were more festivities after that but the parade wiped us all out so we headed back. We sent the kids off to play and Whit fixed us the perfect 4th of July meal - barbecued chicken, baked beans, potato salad and watermelon. We just sat on the front porch enjoying every bite while the kids rolled around on the grass. Their front porch is nothing short of heavenly.
As evening rolled around Adam pulled out some fireworks - they turned out to be completely awesome - sparklers of course were the favorites but there were lots of bright sparkly loud exploding things too. And bottle rockets. Bundle loved those....so much that she spent the rest of the show in the upstairs playroom watching out the window.
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| I can't stand how much I love this picture of R - best sparkler picture ever. |
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| Adam bought these "sparklers" called The Sword of Truth - it would be more aptly named The Sparkler From Hell. The kids adored them. Too bad (not) that they lasted only about 30 seconds each. |
We had to cut our fireworks show a little short because the sun went down and it was time to go watch the big show in the harbor. We headed back down town and just put blankets out in the parking lot of the ferry. It was a great view - impressive show. Troy missed it because with the very first firework, which didn't happen until 10:45 or something nutty like that, Bundle promptly had a full-on meltdown. She did pretty well with the fireworks last year but I think she was maybe 1/10th as exhausted that day as she was on this one. She begged her daddy to take her to the car, which he so kindly did; she was asleep on his shoulder before he even got there. He just lay back in a seat and let her sleep on his chest until the show was over. I was sorry he missed it but loved that he got to rescue his little girl and snuggle with her for a while.
So basically we had an awesome day, and definitely set the precedent for the rest of the week of staying up way way way too late but having a ball.
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