Happy Birthday, America!

I am behind on our doings and will attempt to catch up here... Sunday Gramma Lou was still hanging out and we got invited to a pool party at our friend's house around the corner. As Gramma likes swimming in pools and I am not fond of it (vanity - don't want to mess up my hair, haha) I jumped at the chance to let her play with Benny who is a fabulous swimmer for his age.

We had a blast! He swam for a good hour, maybe more, jumping off the side into Gramma's arms then dog paddling back to the steps where he would climb out and repeat the process. Once again, no fear, no intake of water into his lungs when he went under, and great overall water instincts. Did I mention he had FUN?  Gramma then took him home for a 2 hour nap and brought him back for more swimming - this time I got in on the action and let Gramma relax poolside. I cannot even begin to express in words how this amazing kid surely added a good 5 years to my life that afternoon with his laughter and smiles. He was so darn HAPPY, grinning from ear to ear. So much so that when I woke up to pee at 3am that night I couldn't get back to sleep for 3 hours because I kept thinking about him SMILING in the pool! It looked a lot like this but showing his cute little chicklet teeth:

Emsadoo on the other hand was in the pool for about 5 minutes the entire day. She decided the hot tub was more her speed. I would blame it on her vanity with her hair, too, but as you can see it is pretty wet from the splashing with her girlfriends and their ponies in the tub. Emma is a water wimp - I really need to get her in swimming classes sooner than later...

We spent the late afternoon and evening of the 4th of July at Emma's fiance's house. He has a ginormous back yard and his daddy puts on a fabulous fireworks display at dusk. The kids ran amok and the parents ate amok. George is Greek and his grandparents know how to cook some good Greek eats. George's Mommy was super sweet, too, and made a birthday cake with the attendees with July birthday's names on it. Emma was the lucky one who got to blow out the candles with the help of some of her pals...

 

Daddy took Ben home from the BBQ at about 7:30pm and Em and I stayed for the fireworks. I could tell she was getting tired but she insisted on staying. Of course, when the loud kapows! started and the explosions with lights were going off 50 feet over our heads, she got extremely upset and kept saying, "Mommy, I wanna go home. Fireworks are SCARY." We saw about 10 minutes of the 30 minute event before heading out. Oh well. Mama had fun and got to hang out with some pretty cool peeps.