4th of July

Remember when it was warm and the days were long? It seems like a lifetime ago. But here I am, blogging about it. We kept with tradition by going to the parade on my Grandma's street and watching the fireworks show at our High School. 

Baby's First 4th!

Getting ready for the parade!

We added a new stop to our tradition by making the walk up to my green Grandma's house. She hadn't met Edwin yet, and after all, he is named after her father.
It was a pretty hot day so we made lots of stops.

We looked like we had our own parade going down the street.

We made it to Grandma's house and the boys immediately requested Uncle Gary's cool marble game.

And Grandma got some Edwin snuggles.

 My Green Grandma (Marion Virginia Lovett Roemhildt) Her Father's name is Ralph Edwin Lovett. And here is a little story of how Edwin got his name...When we were realizing that we needed to come up with another baby boy name we had looked at our family trees to see if any family names popped out at us. I started making a list of anything that seemed like it would make a decent name. Family names included Walter, Edwin, William, Coleman, Murphy...(there were many more but those were the ones I wrote down, there were also many other names on our list that weren't family names) I read the list to Max and we both agreed that the names that stood out to us most were Walter and Edwin. A couple weeks later, out of the blue Max says...What do you think of the name Edwin?...it was almost as if he had forgotten our whole conversation (he probably had) and had come up with the idea all on his own. haha! Then at some point we must have been talking about names with our boys because one night as I was putting them to bed we were talking about naming our baby and Charlie says "por favor can we name the baby Edwin, por favor?" At that moment, I felt a bond with the baby that I hadn't felt before (and that our boys had a bond with him) and was almost certain that his name would be Edwin. I was not certain with our older boys until they had been born and Edwin had never been on our name list during previous pregnancies so it was weird that I felt so strongly that our baby would be called Edwin. I strongly believe that my ancestors know my babies before they are sent to me and that there is some reason that he was to be called Edwin, I have an incredible story of how I received my name that involved many of my ancestors. I will share that sometime on here or in person. SO the point is, we wanted to learn more about my Great Grandpa Ralph Edwin Lovett. My grandma spoke so highly of him. She said he was a lawyer but he didn't love that work and she thinks that maybe he had been pressured by family to do that profession. Many of his cases were divorces and he had a hard time seeing that happen to families. She said that he had the most beautiful full head of silver hair as he aged and that he was a loving father and husband.

Here he is pictured with his wife, Marion Henrietta Davies.

Anyway, it was a great visit and it is always fun to feel connected to the past generations.

We then made our way back to Red Grandma's house. (It was about 2 miles round trip.) They were starting some fireworks, so we watched a bit then loaded up our stroller and got Charlie ready for his little business.

Max helped Charlie set up a little glowstick business. They made his little tray together and Charlie purchased all the glow sticks with his own money. He went around yelling "glow sticks for sale" At first he was just walking and yelling and not really aware of people that were interested but he started to figure out to watch for people that were trying to get his attention and just from walking around the high school for 10 minutes, he sold tons of glowsticks and made more money than his original investment (and he still has quite a few glowsticks to sell) He was super proud and had lots of practice talking to people and giving people change. He said, half of his money is for his mission and half is for fun things like a hot air balloon ride.

After some glowstick sales, we found our seat, busted out some snacks and got ready to watch the fireworks.

I didn't even try to take photos of fireworks, I just snuggled with my boys and enjoyed them!

And even after 10pm...this baby was all smiles.