HBD, USA!!

 We are in the car on the way home from my parents' house, and I am blogging on my phone. I just typed a very witty-for-the-car post and then popped over to my text messages to save a bunch of pictures from the weekend that Ben and my mom texted me and LOST THE WHOLE POST. So. Pictures it is!!

Harry's Little League team lost their second play off game and are out of the tournament and done with season. Kind of a bummer but, um, NOT REALLY. 

Dorothy has a tendency to be kind of a pill in the car, but she was so sleepy and sweet on the way to my parents' house. 

We had a fun family dinner Sunday night, and then Ben and I left the kids with my parents and went for drinks with old speech friends, which is always a blast. 

Cooper woke up with a bit of a mosquito bite on the eye. Yikes!

All dressed up for the 4th:

We took the kids to our old favorite college town restaurant-- it really became our favorite when Ben lived in the house next door to it and we are it all the time. Best pepperoni pizza bread and grilled cheeses ever. 

Dorothy and I posed on the steps of my old sorority house. 

The library! My favorite place ever in college! Also, damn does Cooper make taking a group shot hard sometimes. 

How manny classes did we have in this building?! SO MANY. Too many to count. 

Cooper strikes again!

She's always so happy to see me!!

The boys are in love with go karts, but they drive super super super old lady to church slow. 

We continued our nostalgia your by taking the kids to play at my old school where I attended grades 1-5 and 7-8. (The district reorganized when I was in 6th grade, and I went to another school for a year). 

It was fun to peer in all the windows and see things exactly as I remember them. This morning, Harry and I took a walk through The neighborhood I lived in until high school, and I showed him how my friends and I walked to school and where all my neighborhood friends (now Facebook friends) lived. It was lovely. 

Vodka lemonade slushies! The drink of the summer for sure. 

Blowing stuff up. 

Kiddie table!

Kid who refused to sit at the kiddie table!

Dinner was fun because my parents' friends came over, and in haven't seen them in awhile, but I have known them since they were younger than I am now. It made me think about our friend group and what they'll be like in their 60s. I hope we're still cool. (Ha! I've never been cool!)

Sparklers! This would so be my FB cover photo, but there's just a little too much red minivan. 

We went to the Pekin High football stadium for fireworks. I don't think I have been to the fireworks there since 1996, when I was Miss Marigold and led the stadium in the Pledge before the show. 

How adorable is this place?? Most people would have just taken a pic of the stadium crowd, but not me. Selfie ALL THE WAY. 

This is how Jack looked the whole time. Suffice it to say he loves fireworks. 

Sparklers freak me out. 

This was sweaty bug sprayed Dorothy when I climbed into bed with her at midnight ish. She went to bed at 10:30 and kept up full of energy at 7:30. Ahh, to be 3 again.