4th of July

We had such a wonderful 4th of July this year. One of the remarkable things about the holiday was the weather. I have spent nine of the last 10 summers here in Washington DC, and I have never seen a more perfect Independence Day when it comes to weather conditions. The temperature was in the low 80s, no humidity, blue skies with white puffy clouds. Who could ask for anything more?

We started the day by taking advantage of our year passes to Mt. Vernon. They had a big to do going on as you might imagine. We watched some little girls washing clothes with lye in a bucket (Ellie was particularly entranced with this part and stayed there for almost an hour just watching them wash clothes),

looked at the animals (Annie really loved the sheep),

saw the tomb of George and Martha Washington,

listened to a band play some patriotic tunes (Ellie and Annie really enjoyed dancing to the songs)

watched a daytime fireworks display

Ellie and Annie also had the chance to meet General Washington himself. It was really funny because we had just taken them to see the tomb and explained that George died and his body was in the tomb. So when Matt told Ellie that she could go meet George, she looked confused and asked "Daddy is George alive again?" He explained that this was just a man pretending to be George and she was fine with that. Pretty funny. The George impersonator took quite a bit a time with Ellie and Annie talking to them and even teaching Ellie how to curtsy. It was pretty cute. Ellie took to him right away, Annie wasn't too keen on him.

After Mt. Vernon, we headed home for a quick nap and then headed up to visit our friends the Nielsons and join them for a swim in their community pool. No pictures, but we had a lot of fun.

Then home for dinner and off to the military fort right by our house to watch the fireworks. We decided that Ellie was old enough to really appreciate the fireworks so we did actually venture out to see some. In the past, we have stayed home and watched fireworks on TV. I am a particular fan of watching the DC show, the NYC show, and the Boston show on TV all in succession. In fact, I made sure to record it on our DVR this year so I could watch it later, which I did and it was wonderful.

While the fireworks at Fort Belvoir weren't all that remarkable, they were good enough, Ellie loved them. Poor Matt and Ellie waited in a hour long line to buy a funnel cake, which was very tasty, but still probably not worth the hour long wait required to actually buy it. The best part was that it took us no more than 15 minutes to get home. In fact, when we said goodnight to the girls and shut their bedroom door only 20 minutes had passed since the last firework had boomed. It was wonderful. We may go there every year.

To wrap up our celebration, the next day I made a flag cake which was really tasty.