4th of July // 2018 Edition

For whatever reason, South Western Pennsylvania is going through an identity crisis. It thinks it’s Florida or some southern state like that. We’ve had a record-breaking amount of rain so far already this year (I’ve heard rumors that we’ve had more rain than Seattle, Washington?!) and our temperatures have just been off the charts. Normally, we see a week or at most two of temps in the high 90’s – but that doesn’t usually come until mid-August, when you’d expect summer to be in full force, right? Our Junes & Julys seem to average around the mid-80’s. Not this year though! On top of our crazy rain, our temps have settled in (it seems to stay) around the upper-90’s.

Needless to say, our 4th of July could be classified by one word: hot.

We kicked off our Wednesday holiday by going to Kennywood Tuesday night. Like I said, it’s been hot, so we purposefully waited until later in the evening to go. We ate dinner at home & planned to get ice cream in the park. We didn’t arrive at the park until around 6:30pm & it was still a “cozy” 91º.

We had such a fun time though – the park wasn’t super busy and since I can’t really ride anything anyway, we just basically followed Braelynn through Kiddieland. She loves Kennywood & we are so thankful that we went ahead and got season passes for the year! It’s been the highlight of our summer.

Minnie Mouse was our “stuffie” of choice for the evening & I couldn’t believe that she was allowed to ride most of the rides with Braelynn!

This picture. I die.

Love those little hands up!

This is the “big” whip and Braelynn absolutely loves it! She rode it last year, but wasn’t too sure about how it tosses you around – this year though, she is all about it! See her little feet up in the air? Hilarious!

As we were picking our spot to watch the fireworks, it started lightning! I was dying to get a shot of all the lightning that was happening up in the clouds, but, if you’ve ever attempted to photograph lightning before, it’s insanely hard (especially with a 3-year-old that you’re responsible for running around). This is the best shot I got:

We actually all slept in on Wednesday morning (8am! Yeah!) and then it was off to my parent’s house for a cookout. We were missing a few family members (Amy & Emma are off in California for a friend’s wedding), but we still had so much fun!
Braelynn still isn’t the biggest fan of her little cousin Alethea. We wanted a photo of them together in their red, white, and blue, and well, this is the best we got. By the time Braelynn cooperated by sitting sort-of-close to Alethea, Alethea had had enough & was voicing her dislike of the heat. Oh well, one day they’ll be BFFs.

I also realized that we never got a family photo of the 3 (4) of us! So, this is the best I could do. Let’s blame it on pregnancy brain.

Did I mention it was hot? Even Grandma got in the kiddie pool!

And of course, the water balloons were a highlight.

We don’t always do super fun things for the 4th of July, but when we do, I like to write about them:
4th of July in 2016
4th of July in 2013