Fireworks Day....

4th of July is such an exciting day to be here in the states.
The country pretty much has one big patriotic party. Our plans ended up getting cancelled so we made the most of some downtime at home. It was great, Dave and I stayed in our pj's until lunch time and had a totally lazy day around the house which was so badly needed. It was nice to not have any expectations for the day, so relaxing. The boys were pretty happy playing outside today and so excited about seeing fireworks tonight, I think they were on a bit of a high, it was great.
While Thomas slept in the afternoon I got out my paintbrush and kept working on the living/dinning room which I am currently decorating, I am nearly there and will post some pics soon. I'm painting it a happy, warm yellow, I call it bringing the sunshine in which is needed here in Seattle =)
Anyway getting back to the day of celebrations...
Around 6pm we started hearing the bangs of fireworks. Renton prohibits residents from letting of fireworks at home, but most of the surrounding areas allow it. One of our neighbors let of a few small fireworks on the corner so we walked down to check it out. It was nice to meet some more neighbors in the area. They had sparklers and gave the boys a sparkler each, Thomas was loving it! He was dancing around with it and giggling his head off, just wish I had the camera for that.
We have really great neighbors, earlier that night our neighbor that backs on to us brought over some little pop rockets for the boys to let off, so sweet of him.
After our little neighborhood display we jumped in the car to go see the big city of Renton display down on Lake Washington at Coloun Park. We didn't want to go to the park as we knew it would be crowded and the parking is horrible. So we went further around to a little park that juts out into the middle of the lake (can't remember the name?) It was perfect, lots of parking and not to crowded, but enough people to give it a fun atmosphere. It looked out over the Renton display as well as the Bellevue, Seattle, Mercer Is. and all of sth Seattle area. Just amazing, you didn't know where to look. As well as the big displays all those cities put on, most of the hills were lit up by private displays, we were surrounded. we decided that we will head back here every year, we loved it!!!
Its a very moving time and even though we are not American, you still feel a real sence of pride and gratitude to be living here.