4th of July

We decided to stay local this year, the first time in our marriage (kind of-2 years ago, I was local, but Chris was gone). We woke up, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, until we realized that we were running behind if we wanted to get a good seat at the parade in Belton. Despite us arriving 10 minutes after the parade began, we still found a decent parking spot, and an awesome front row seat. John enjoyed waving the flag he received and watching the horses. He also enjoyed the music! Unfortunately there weren't too many floats, just a lot of cars holding political campaigners. Ugh! And, no one gives out anything anymore either, boo! We ended up leaving before it was over in hopes that we could give John a nap, since we had a big day ahead of us, and he hadn't been feeling well (fever & runny nose).

Had to get a cheesy picture of myself in here, plus it's one of the first where you can kinda see my belly!
Some of the soldiers from Chris's unit marched in the parade!
General Wentz



John being patriotic waving the flag!

John curiously watching the parade!


Some of the better "floats."
"I'm having fun!"


After John's nap, Chris treated us to Chick-Fil-A (totally a traditional 4th of July meal, right!). We ran into some friends from church at the mall, and so we ate with them. They directed us to some good sales there. Unfortunately Old Navy didn't have any of their patriotic t-shirts that we've been getting year after year. We got home in time to meet Mac. We had wanted to go to some of the events on Ft. Hood, particularly the horses, but b/c John wasn't feeling good, we decided to just let him rest, and hang out at home, especially because we knew it was going to be a late evening.
Chris noticed these "independent" clouds on our drive back to Killeen. Quite fitting for Independence Day!


For dinner we went out and celebrated with the Navigators and their group at Art & Robin Allen's house. We got to reacquaint ourselves with some people who we had met before and meet new ones. John loved climbing and crawling all over their lawn, especially to go see/play with their dog Faith.

Exploring Art & Robin's backyard
Chris entertaining the older kids. Getting ready for 12 of our own!



I wanted to watch the fireworks on Ft. Hood, cuz I wanted to hear music along with the fireworks. To me, fireworks are beautiful, but they are so much more amazingly patriotic when they are in time with patriotic music. So, we left Art & Robin's around 8:30 and headed toward post. We stopped by daddy's office thinking we could maybe see the fireworks from there. We changed John into his pj's, hoping he would fall asleep shortly. We finally found a spot where we could see the fireworks really well, and I tried to feed John to help put him to sleep. No such luck. He was still awake when the fireworks started, so we took him out so he could watch them. He was pretty much in awe. We couldn't hear the music as well as I had wanted (hence the whole reason for going onto post), but Chris found a great patriotic station, that seemed to go with the fireworks. It was really neat to watch the fireworks together as a family and with Mac there, and on a post that has men and women fighting for our freedom.
"Hmm what are we looking for?"
"Oh, that's what the wait was for!"
Family 4th of July
"Wait I'm missing some!


There was one interesting thing that happened, that if I had paid attention to what was going on, I probably would have stepped in and gotten more involved. As we were sitting watching the show, a young man came up and stood a distance away from us, but started talking to us (kind of). He kept saying he was left behind, and then exclaiming (with some explatives) how beautiful the fireworks were. As the show went on, he stepped further back, and started crying, and then we looked for him at the end and he wasn't there. As we drove away we saw him weeping on the side of the road, being comforted by a stranger. We realized that he was either talking about being left behind, here in America while his unit was overseas, but more likely that he was referring to being left behind by the death of soldiers and friends he had served alongside with. I wish that we had had more of an opportunity to minister to him, but Chris reminded me that we had John and that he really needed to get to bed. It is so hard to balance the desire to minister to others when it conflicts the needs of your children. It's something I constantly struggle with and probably will for a lifetime.