Our Fourth of July weekend was so much fun (except for Sunday evening but I'll get to that in a second)!

We went to Grammie's for a weekend of swimming, fireworks and Wimbledon-watching.

On the Fourth, we had a nice sized group over for a yummy all-American feast:





Gary had bought some "age-appropriate" fireworks for Emmylou and Amelia and could NOT wait to get to them (notice how there are no photos of fireworks being ignited in the dark). Here they are with some poppers that shoot streamers and lighting sparklers...







Emmylou wasn't too sure about the sparklers being so close...



And someone else was a little scared of them and hiding...



The firework grand finale included a few disappointing turtle fireworks that were supposed to shoot fire out of their butts to make them crawl across the street and this oh-so-glorious spectacle of a fountain...



To end the day, Emmylou and Grammie put on their Statue of Liberty hats and watched The Wonder Pets: Save the Pigeon, set on the nose of the Statue of Liberty.



On Sunday morning, Emmylou woke up and the first thing she said in the sleepiest, sweetest voice was, "It was a fun day. Turtle shoot fireworks out his butt."

We watched the marathon Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final the rest of the day so Emmylou started with a bowl of strawberries and cream (natch).





So... the only bummer of the weekend was that on our way out of town Sunday evening we stopped to visit with PawPaw and Nana and while going back to their house after dinner out, we rear-ended them! It wasn't a bad wreck, but bad enough to lose the front half of our bumper and headlight and we had to pull some metal back away from the wheel so we could drive our car home. Their car wasn't damaged as badly. We finally made it home around 9:30 and I decided to call my doctor since you're supposed to report even minor fender benders to them. I thought at the very most they'd make me go to the ER for a quick ultrasound to make sure nothing ruptured or dislodged from the jolt of the accident, but the doctor on call made me go to the hospital's labor and delivery unit for 4 hours of fetal monitoring and blood tests! Everything was completely fine as they expected and I'm glad that I got checked out, but I didn't get home until 3:30 in the morning!

Anyway, all is fine now, our car's in the shop and we have a rental for the month it'll probably take to get fixed. Emmylou keeps talking about "my broken car" and says she likes her "brand new car." We'll have to see how attached she gets to our sweet new Dodge Avenger. Awesome.