4th of July!

**Disclaimer**-If you don't want to see an obscene amount of pictures of patriotic flair and my kids in themed outfits, stop reading now. 

We started our our Independence Day festivities on the 3rd of July. Mainly because I had too many patriotic outfits for the boys to wear in one day.

On the 4th, we kept up our tradition of the kids' bike parade and the symphony picnic in the park with all our friends. Kelly and I decided to take our picnic to the next level this year in hopes of winning the picnic contest. It didn't work. But, we had an awesome time party planning and prepping, our tent looked great, the food was fantastic and everyone had a great time.

We expanded our picnic flair by about 300% this year and went from 3rd place to 5th place. Wah wah. But in seeing the 4 groups that beat us, it is pretty clear that there was absolutely zero judging criteria and they must just randomly pick winners out of a hat or something. I mean, the 2nd place tent had one poster board and the word heroes was spelled wrong. Seriously. But, we gave ourselves the title of "People's Choice Award," because we had countless people coming up and taking pictures of our spread and telling us how awesome it was. And we made the paper again. That was gratification enough for both of us :)

 A few shots of our picnic flair-"Life, Liberty, Longmont" (copyright @Kate Hines 2013)

The kids' table-complete with matching shirts for all of them, hats, glasses, a craft bag and snacks.

 My two patriotic cuties.

 The 9 kids after decorating their bikes before parading around the park.

The kids singing their song, "This Town is My Town," to the judges. 

Mac teaching Emmy his bubble blowing technique of spitting all over the bubble wand and then dipping it in the bubble solution and licking it.

 The best group shot you can get with 9 kids pumped full of sugar.

Almost all my best girls of the Mont. We were missing Kate.

Tim's patriotic shirt never gets old.

After spending most of the day at the park having a blast and eating lots of yummy food, we headed home for naps and outfit changes (patriotic outfits #3 if you are keeping track) and then headed over to the Andrews to continue the festivities.

The traditional pic of all the kids with their bomb pops after dinner.

 The biggest kids-

 The littlest kids-

We watched the fireworks from the Walmart parking lot. It was perfect because it was lit up so we could keep track of the kids, we had a decent view, and the fireworks were far enough away that it wasn't loud enough to scare any of the kids.

All in all a perfect 4th of July!