The Great Statema Adventure: Happy Birthday America!

How do we celebrate the 4th of July?

With friends and ice cream, of course.

Kai enjoying some sugar (above)

Liam, the Cone Man (above)

Jocelyn and David prepping their ice cream (above)

And, Lily who decided she did not want ice cream. Goofy Girl.

And, the mama's. From left to right-Shannon, Michelle, myself and Libby

Playing outside in our teeny yard

Sand box-always a hit. Finally cleaned out after the cats though it was a litter box previously.

The day and party went super well. After the party the sun decided to show up and we headed to the green playground for some swinging fun. Then we came home, ate dinner, and got ready for bed. Everything was great until....10pm when our neighbors thought it was the 4th of July and started to set off some crazy fireworks awaking my little munchkin in a state of panic and the poor thing was up until 12:30am. She was so scared. I wrapped her in a cozy blanket, brought her down stairs and welcomed daddy home from work. Then we put on very loud relaxing music and waiting until the fire works died down at midnight. Poor thing. And, of course, she was up bright and early at 6:30am.

THE 4TH OF JULY

Happy Birthday America.

We are so thankful for our Freedom.

It is for Freedom that Christ set us free.

Today, I knew was not going to be the best day. I kind of figured it would be one of the more stressful days of our year thanks to 4th of July 2009, PTSD, Update #1, update #2. I usually love the 4th, BBQ's and fireworks but now that my sweet pea is sensitive to sound and has sensory issues I am not the fondest. I love what this day stands for and celebrate it but the other events will need to wait until Grace is a bit older and ready to handle all the sound and sensations.

Today we went to church. Then home for lunch. I figured since it was the 4th, we'd do mini corn dogs to be festive. We went out back, played in a mole hill, and picked "flowers" for daddy from our neighbors weedy area. It's full of fun for Grace so I let her believe with out a doubt that she is picking the most beautiful flowers. Then we headed up for nap time. I napped. Poor Grace didn't. I think she was too nervous knowing that what day it was. We colored together, read together, put on the Wiggles and danced and sang together. We laughed a lot. She even asked me to do one of the sparklers we bought. We took a bath together and got ready for bed. Thus the "fun" began. I had her in our bed with 3 fans and some Michael Allison music. She plugged her ears the entire time and just could not fall asleep. I was getting so frustrated knowing that once it got dark all hope of her falling asleep was over. Finally, I brought her to her room. Moved all the fans over and got her all snuggled in. She did not want to be alone so I spent another hour in her bed waiting for her to stop fighting sleep. After 2.5 hours and lots of stress, she was out, fingers in her ears and her teeny body curled up in a little ball. Oh, what a snuggling little monkey.

Side Note: she ended up sleeping all night with out waking, even with a war zone outside. Thank you God for answering our prayers with a YES!