Braintree's 4th of July

Our town celebrates the fourth of July on the weekend before; with what we have just found out to be a pretty darn good parade.... followed by a carnival at the high school, and some late night fireworks. My mom was still in town visiting from Vince and Zoë's dual birthday party so she was able to join us for the festivities. We made our way to the town square and planted ourselves down on a good sidewalk space, and waited for the fun to begin. The kids got spoiled by my mom, who visited the various roaming toy carts... buying all sorts of holiday and non holiday goodies for Vince and Zoë. My favorite was Vince's July 4th hat.

Nothing like getting free stuff!

yeah, life is pretty good when you get candy and presents thrown at you from crazy looking clowns

Here we are on one of the carnival rides Vince actually enjoyed.

Mike wasn't so lucky with the ride he took Vince on (I'll spare the pictures). It was a smaller version of the viking boat that you've probably seen, rocking up and down on both sides. Well, Vince freaked on that one... as I sat and watched them go up and down, every time they were up he would scream bloody murder and have the most frightened look on his face. It broke my heart to see him! I had to look away... Mike just put up his hands and went with it. poor kid, I'm sure we've scarred him on that one. Of course my mom was a nervous wreck while watching all of this too, and commenced barking at me for allowing all of this to happen. It stirred up the old story of when she and I went on a similar Viking boat ride at the Days of Verdugo Fair.... although that one was regular sized. We got on the boat-at the very end (I wanted to make sure to be the highest when it swung in the air)... and as it started, and got higher and higher, my mom started freaking out-screaming at the ride conductor to stop the ride because she was convinced I was going to fall out of the ride. We'd swing up.. then every time we swung down she'd take the opportunity to yell at the conductor! Talk about embarrassing..... I'll never forget that day.

Some super fun slides we went down!

Grandma and Zoë got some cuddle time