Happy 4th of July!

What a fun-filled 4th of July weekend! It started Thursday night with a Flint Symphony concert at Crossroads Village! The Flint Symphony performs free concerts during the summer and this was their first one. The kids not only love being outdoors, but they love hearing the different kinds of music, and, I think, just the atmosphere of an outdoor concert! Here's Emma enjoying "American Salute" by Morton Gould. As you can see, she also got her hair cut this past week!

When the concert was over, Bradlee kept trying to tell Tony he wanted to hear "one more"!!! Here is a photograph of this conversation:

Friday, after work, I headed home to find Tony in bed with a migraine, Bradlee was gone with Tony's parents, and Emma and Lynne were playing happily and waiting for me to get home! It was the night of our annual Detroit Symphony concert at Greenfield Village! Unfortunately, Tony wasn't able to go, and we thought it best that Bradlee not go either, since we would have the same amount of "stuff" to carry, but one less adult! So, Emma, Lynne and I headed down to Dearborn, stopped at Jimmy Johns for dinner, and then into Greenfield Village for an AWESOME concert! :) Emma just loves this concert, and I can tell because she asks me all the time when "the big outside concert" is! She told me she was taking her stuffed tiger, "Tchai" to the concert because his real name is Tchaikovsky and he wrote the "last song with all the canons"!!! This girl amazes me! The guest soloist was a harmonica player and he was incredible! If you have ever heard the piece "Bugler's Holiday", he played the trumpet part from that, using 4 different harmonicas! The orchestra also played "American Salute" that the FSO had played the night before, to which Emma exclaimed, "HEY! I heard this YESTERDAY! Mom, can you put this on my iPod?" LOL

The final "official" piece of the concert is my favorite each year. The orchestra performs the "1812 Overture" by Tchaikovsky with REAL CANONS! :) It's such a neat piece to begin with, and then you add the canons, man....just heavenly! :) LOL

To close the night, the orchestra plays a number of marches (mostly by John Phillip Sousa) to a fabulous firework display! They, of course, close with "The Stars and Stripes Forever"!! Here are some pictures from our awesome 5th DSO @ Greenfield Village concert!!

On Saturday, Emma and I got some things done at home, then went to Tony's parents' to pick Bradlee up. Mom had texted me a note that Bradlee had fallen asleep in his bean bag chair on their patio while watching a movie...and he was still there when Emma and I arrived! I think that little pool and playing outside just wears him out!! We also jumped in the pool and had dinner!!

Sunday, we got up, made some pancakes for dinner, then everyone got their swimsuits on and we drove over to Tony's parents' for the 4th of July festivities! On our way over, we played some patriotic music for the kids to enjoy and listen to...including "God Bless America", "God Bless the USA" and then "America" by Neil Diamond! The kids LOVED this last one, joining in the "TODAY!!!!!" part! I think we listened to that song about 4 times! Here they are singing along!

My parents came over in the afternoon and we had a wonderful time celebrating America's birthday! My dad and Emma had a water fight (my dad started it...Emma was in the pool, he was out of it!), we had a great BBQ with some great food and great company! We spent a lot of time in the pool, too! We left around 8:30pm and ran home to grab a few things, then went to a spot around downtown Flint to get ready for the Flint fireworks. For a troubled city like Flint, they did a very nice job of fireworks, and we found a great spot! Bradlee was a little nervous at first, clinging onto me, but within 10 minutes of hearing and seeing what was going on, he would start clapping and cheering on his own, and turned to me and said, "dat coo!!" (that's cool!) with a HUGE grin on his face!

It was really nice to also have Monday off, so the four of us just hung out at home during the day, and then went to dinner with my grandparents, aunt and uncle from Chicago, parents, sisters and Garrett. I didn't get a single picture at dinner...figures! I'll see if anyone else did from that night and post it later!! Hope all of YOU had a great 4th of July weekend, too!!