The 4th

The days of my bigger little smiling so pretty for the picture are just about gone.  She's full of attitude and her own little personality.  So our 4th of July photo shoot = FAIL.  And the littler little?  Yeah, he just flat out doesn't care.

Here are the casual 4th outfits (because you know we have lots of wardrobe changes for holidays around here)

And we are done.  The girl only sat still for about 3 pictures, the rest are of her imitating a deranged spider monkey on that chair.  This was after, of course, she demanded to sit on the pink chair after I told her the yellow chair was it, and then when I caved and brought over the pink chair she insisted on the yellow one.

And here is our first family photo.  I'm always scared to try for posed photos with Ella because you just never know what personality of hers will come out.  It's not really that she was tantrum-y for these photos, just easily distracted.

And she wanted to hold baby brother.  Ok, if it will make you smile, whatevs.

And then there was an airplane.  We spent a good 5 minutes talking about that.

And we're done.  Or more like she's done and Sawyer is about to pass out.

So this was Ella's first year to watch the fireworks.  She absolutely loves them on TV so I figured it would be so special for her.  We talked about them all day and hyped it up.  She wanted to sit on Daddy's shoulders to get the best view.

Then the first firework went off....

And this is apparently how she really feels about that.

Baby girl lost it.  As Shaun is taking her off, screaming as if  a clown with a bloody knife was chasing her I just said, "Oh she'll be fine, just leave her here and she'll get used to it."  Sometimes I shock myself when I'm the tougher (aka: mean) parent.  Shaun ended up putting her in the car with the radio turned way up, while she watched the show but really just kept honking the horn and playing with the buttons.

Shockingly the infant in the wrap couldn't have been happier to be chillin outside, watching the bright, loud noise in the sky and being blinded by the flash from Mommy taking about a thousand pictures in the pitch black of night.  I actually stopped and wondered if I was harming his eyesight.  And then I kept taking pictures.  Kids...they're so resilient.