Birthdays and Fireworks

So while we unpacked and worked our way through the mountains of laundry we celebrated Cadence's 3rd birthday!  She was pretty excited about her Paw Patrol cake.

 It survived the freezer!  The color flow colors did some migrating though- I wonder if regular food coloring doesn't work well and if I needed to use special food coloring- next time I'll look into that.  I know I gave it plenty of time to dry in between colors.  Oh well, if you squint it looks ok, and Cadence didn't care.  

 She begged to open her presents all morning, so we let her after lunch.

 Uncle Jakey and Aunt Rachel even sent her a present. :)

 She wanted to help make pizza for supper.

 Just couldn't resist the flower decorations on the cake.

 Pleased as punch.

 We may need to work on blowing out candles.  haha. She had a good birthday.

 So my brain is mush.  I somehow managed to schedule Miriel and Cadence for checkups on the same day two hours apart- because I didn't put either of them on the calendar.  Thank goodness for reminder calls.  Miriel went first, then we picked up groceries and got milkshakes/slushies before heading back for Cadence.  Not my favorite way to spend an afternoon.  

 We had plenty of time to study the infectious diseases poster at the doctor.  They had so many questions... so I told them about how my great-aunt Madelyn had polio when she was a girl, and my great-uncle Elvin... he was paralyzed from the waist down and 'walked' by lifting his legs and feet with his hands.  They tried it- "this is hard!" 

 Mom sent me this page about him from the Romersberger book:

 While we were on our way home from the doctor we saw the Wienermobile!! It was quite exciting.  For the sake of summer learning, or something, I told Cecily to do a journal about it like she did in school.

 We tried out the bubble gloves that Kaleigh brought the girls. :)  

 We needed a hot afternoon activity so they painted magnets.

 Some were more neat than others....

We didn't do much on the 4th.  We were feeling festive though! 

 I dug out the star cookie cutter for lunch, that plus fancy paper plates and the girls thought I had actually tried.  :)

 We went to the farm for supper to celebrate Cadence's birthday. And we got to meet little Logan, and Ned was there.   The birthday girl was just a little bit shy about getting sung to.  

 The two and three year olds made very short work of opening presents... haha. 

 Then it was off to Eureka for fireworks!  We weren't sure if it was going to rain on us or not; it stayed dry and the girls enjoyed playing at Ron and Kary's.

 Just chatting with Suz.

 I forgot to bring glow sticks.  Sad news- but Aunt Shelly came through!  

Miriel did pretty well- I think she nursed through most of the fireworks show.  And then we had root beer floats and got home way too late and the girls were very grouchy today.  
Summer seems to be flying by.  And I just realized that this week is the first week I've had to cook in quite a while.  Haha... and actually do a meal plan...  it's always rather humbling when people bring food.  Partly because so many people are so generous, and partly because our friends and family are much better cooks than I am!
Blessings.
p.s.  Here's 1-4 on their first 4th.