Fourth of July/Erick's Bday/Belly Pic

Hello family and friends! Hope you all had a fun Fourth of July! We always do - it's become one of my favorite holidays. Every year there's a big BBQ at Erick's Grandma's house. She lives right next door to his parents. They each have a pool and no dividing fence so it's a big pool party. We always have such a blast. This year, their neighbors (Colleen & Ray) were having a block party. They have two little girls that are the same ages as McKenna and Kyla. They had tons of balloons and a princess castle bounce house! They invited us over and the girls were in heaven! Even sweeter was when Colleen said we could leave the girls for a bit if we wanted to go relax. SUH-WEET! She didn't have to convince us. I think we left a trail of dust behind us. LOL! I'm kidding. We weren't anxious to leave the kids but we had been wanting to get together with this family for awhile now because we knew our kids would love playing together. So we were glad to leave for a bit and let the girls all have fun together.


I didn't get any picks of the block party but here's a few pics from the BBQ:

Cupcakes!




Swimming!
We'd bought McKenna this little life vest to swim with but she wasn't quite ready to swim on her own. She did swim with Erick though. He taught her how to kick and paddle. But the favorite was of course, this purple floatie toy that we had bought for Kyla:




Singing Happy Birthday to Daddy!



Kyla and her cousin Jesseca


They decided to "nap" until fireworks started. Ha, yeah right:



Just liked this one of them with their little sparkler ponytails:



"I think I hear the fireworks!"



Watching Fireworks:




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Thursday was Erick's birthday. We spent the day together as a family and then my Mom came to babysit the girls for the evening (thanks Mom!) Erick and I went to The Melting Pot which is always fabulous. Although we always get the "Big Night Out" meal with the lobster and all that. But the main course is always the least of our favorite courses. So we've decided next time we're getting two cheese courses, a salad course and a dessert course. Much better we think!

After dinner we went to see this indy film called Once. I realize this film may not be for everyone so don't take this rave as a high recommendation for everyone. But I just have to say that it was such a beautiful film that I can't stop thinking about it! It was such a sincere love story and the end was so unexpected that it really touched my heart. When the credits started rolling I was just kind of swept away with this surprise and respect for the movie. And the music.... just wow. It was so perfect. I've listened to the soundtrack several times today. I'm just addicted to it. At the core of the plot is these two songwriters who are writing music and recording an album. Being married to a musician and having spent many of those looooooong studio nights with him and his band, it brought back some fun memories and remembering how important those songs were to Erick as he would pour himself into the writing. It was just an incredible film. The whole night was the perfect date night.

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Today was less eventful. I spent 3 hours at the hair salon getting color and a cut. Then a quick stop to Forever 21 for some transitional shirts. Came home, ate lunch with the fam. I made a call to Hullabaloo's to reserve McKenna's birthday party. She wants a Wizard of Oz theme. I could order W o/Oz invites but I think I can make cuter ones. So I gotta get to work on that! Anyway after that we went to see Erick's parents. He'd left his sunglasses there so we went to pick them up and ended up staying for dinner.

Here's a 10 1/2 week belly shot I took tonight:


And here's McKenna's 10 1/2 week belly shot:


LOL doesn't she look like someone's drunk uncle at a party??


Tomorrow we're taking the kids to see Ratatouille in the morning. Our first family movie! Then in the evening we're going to dinner at Amazon (Brazilian BBQ) with our friends who are coming in from out-of-town. That should be lots of fun! I gotta remember to bring the camera!