Our 4th of July

Hope you all had an amazing Independence Day! 

We didn't have any solid plans for the 4th of July. We thought we'd start off with a hike and then see where the day took us from there. We tried a new to us paved hiking loop near Stanford, and after the first five minutes I think Joe and I were both ready to throw in the towel. Hiking takes on a whole new level of difficulty when you're pushing 60 lbs of babies up a hill. Once we made it past the first steep part it leveled out and wasn't too hard. Ez walked a good amount, and even ran part of it, chasing after me pretending to be a zombie. But then he faceplanted on the asphalt and that was the end of that. Declan would've gladly walked the whole thing except he wanted to go every direction except the way the path led. He's a forge your own path kind of kid. Eventually he took a nice long stroller nap.

Five hot miles later we headed to a nearby outdoor mall for some lunch and walking around, followed by some shopping at Trader Joe's. Both kids fell asleep on the way home and took nice long naps so we enjoyed a little downtime. When they woke up we debated taking the train downtown to watch the fireworks, but Joe and I were feeling pretty tired and lazy and we decided to skip the whole fireworks thing. Then we noticed we could see the fireworks out of our living room window, so we decided to walk down to the corner to get a better look. Ez was so excited and kept pointing out which colors the fireworks were, so we decided to walk a little further to a nearby park and that wound up being the best fireworks spot. It wasn't crowded and we had a perfect view. For some reason Ez decided that fireworks were scary by that point, and spent half the time hiding under Joe's hoodie, but Declan sat completely mesmerized the whole time. It was the first time since he's learned how to crawl that he just sat on my lap for a full thirty minutes without even attempting to escape. Too bad fireworks aren't a regular thing. 

Starting the week on a Tuesday is always nice, even if it means I'll have no idea what day it is for the next four days. 

Also, a huge Happy Birthday to Gangy/my mom! We love you!