Week 122

June 29-July 5

After a week in Columbia without Ed, it was nice to come home and still have a few days off for a long family fun filled weekend! Fourth of July fell on a Monday this year so the festivities were kind of spread out because I think that most people weren't quite sure when they should celebrate. Fine with us, we love fun stuff to do.

Sunday morning we started off by going to the beach...but when we walked down and settled in a nice spot we realized there were jellyfish. Everywhere. Literally, you almost couldn't take 3 steps without seeing one. We were out of there. There was no way Jack was going to stay out of the water and I did not want to see him get stung. With his seemingly sensitive skin and odd rashes, who knows what that could potentially do. We went to the pool.

It was kind of nice because the pool opens early on the weekends and apparently no one realizes it. We had the whole place to ourselves. Jack went from the baby pool to the big pool, back to the baby pool, etc. We had a great time and wore him out (on purpose) so that we could take him home, feed him lunch, and we were hoping he would take a nice nap. Worked like a charm. He slept for over 2 hours and woke up in a great mood. We all got ready and headed to Palm Bay for the "Splashes and Sparks Independence Day Celebration."

It was a super cute festival geared toward families. They had a live band, food, free bounce houses, and a couple of vendors. No alcohol allowed. I really liked that about this particular festival because it kept things focused on kids. Jack absolutely had a blast. He went in quite a few bounce houses, even one with some bigger kids. He held his own and jumped his little heart out. He LOVES to jump!! It was pretty hot so we made sure to make him drink plenty of cold water. After the bounce houses Jack and I took a ride on the "choo-choo train" to cool off. The breeze felt great!

At that point it was about dinner time so we spread our blanket and got some food. One of the fun parts of festivals and holidays like 4th of July is eating the "junky" food. We tried to be a little bit health conscious and ordered ham and cheese paninis with sweet potato ribbons. The food was delicious! While we ate we sat for awhile and listened to the band that they had.

After eating we needed to kill some time before the sun went down and the fireworks started. We let Jack jump a little more, walked around, and then got ice cream to top off the deliciousness of the day. :) Jack had a red, white, and blue spider man popsicle. So cute! He never gets sweets like this, so he was having a pretty great day!

We got back on our blanket and waited while the sun set. To pass the time Jack and Ed colored some pictures. Finally it got dark! Fireworks started at 9:00 pm. Ed and I were a little nervous about Jack lasting this long (his usual bedtime is 7:00 pm), hence the planned nap. He was so excited! These were his first fireworks and I wasn't sure if he would be scared of the noise. He just clapped and yelled, "boom, boom, boom" when the loud ones went off.

He lasted through the whole show. I was so proud of him. He even stayed awake for the whole ride home. He couldn't stop talking about the fireworks. I could tell he had a great day and I'm glad we went to the festival. There was traffic getting out of the fair grounds and he didn't get to bed until almost 11:00 pm. By far the latest he has ever stayed up in his life! He still got up at 7:30 this morning.

Today was actually 4th of July. We decided to hit up a parade in Downtown Melbourne. It was super hot and started raining about 30 minutes before start time...then stopped. This made all the heat rise up from the street and the humidity ridiculous. We promised Jack a parade so we stuck it out. The actual parade was pretty much a repeat of the one we went to on Memorial Day Weekend, but Jack really seemed to enjoy it. There were some interesting floats though.

After the parade we went to lunch at a delicious Irish Restaurant called Meg O'Malley's. It was super yummy! Tomorrow it is back to reality with the food. No more eating out. No more junk. We had a fantastic family weekend, now it is time to go back to work and also get ready for our big move. Today makes 29 weeks of pregnancy for me! 11 weeks left! :) Happy 4th of July to everyone, hope you had a nice family weekend!!