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4th of July - The Monsoon of 2011

Now that it's almost a month late, here are our 4th of July photos! We had a very fun day, despite the monsoon rain we had in the evening.





We started the day with a parade in the front of the neighborhood, then over to our friends for our annual tradition of lunch and play before we grill out and have our firework display at our home.

The weather for the day started out great, and then at about 4pm the heavens opened up and started pouring. It stopped about an hour later...but soon returned.





I've been enjoying using all my beautiful Willow House products to entertain with and display in new ways. It's always fun to find a creative use for a piece that you think can only be used in a traditional way.

I love my dessert tower and have used this French Wire Tiered Stand for every holiday since I received it last fall - LOVE IT!




It was also fun to use my Must Have Mini Markers, along with my buckets, to display the drinks. Of course all the men commented that I didn't need to use the signs, as you could tell by looking in the buckets what was in there. But the women had my back and explained that it was nice to look at - and my point was the little kids that weren't tall enough to see down into the bucket could tell from their view which one to grab from. Men!




This year truly felt like a Seattle 4th of July -- very wet! I don't ever remember a 4th of July down here where it rained non-stop for hours on end. And it not only rained, it poured! Especially when Jason was outside manning the grill. He was such a great sport about it - we all appreciated his good attitude.




The rain didn't stop the grilling and it didn't stop the display of fireworks. We had a brief period of light rain at the start, so we tried to get the colored smoke bombs and parachute ones for the kids done quickly.




We didn't enjoy the view from the driveway (the best place to look up and really get a feel of the big ones) but luckily we had a covered area to watch from! All the kids stayed in the street with Jason (except the littlest ones). The rain didn't spoil the show for Jason.




Everyone was drenched at the end but we had so much fun! We had to cut the show off early because it became too hard for Jason to light the wicks in the rain. But we enjoyed the rest of them the following weekend with even more friends and neighbors, so it all worked out in the end!

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