Weekend: {The 4th}

We had a lovely weekend.

Started with our first night away.  I missed her.  A LOT.  I may or may not have woken Mark up at 9:30, rushed him through breakfast, begged him to drink his third cup of coffee a little faster, and ran into my sister's house (I think I might have been inside before Mark had the keys out of the ignition) to scoop up my sweetness and love, love, LOVE all over her beautiful little self.

I did enjoy the time alone with Mark.  But I just feel better when our little family is together.

We had a great 4th as well.  We ate.  We ate some more.  We passed the baby. We watched sweaty kids run around the yard. 

I made cake pops.  They turned out so CUTE!

They were....shall we say....time-consuming.  But fun.  I will share some of my tips and tricks (seeing as how I'm a pro now that I've made them ONCE)....later this week.

I loved dressing Natalie up in her 4th of July outfit.  She gave daddy lots of cute smiles while I clicked away.  I'm a bit obsessive about her first holidays....the outfits, the pictures, the traditions.  I just love making these memories with her.  Sure, they are more my memories.  But I hope someday she'll look back on these pictures and see how important it was to her momma to make her "firsts" really special. 

 Seriously.  Isn't she the cutest?  I can't take it.

Then we took some pictures outside.  Always one with mommy, one with daddy.

 (LOVE this picture!)

We made the cousins pose for a holiday picture.  Natalie looks thrilled, obviously.

It's difficult to get four children to all look at the camera and smile at the same time!  Then, they wanted baby Natalie to lay on the blanket with their flags.  More cuteness.

Chubby baby!  Do you see the spit up down the front of the onesie?  *sigh* We can't keep anything nice around here. :) 

We didn't go see fireworks this year, but we saw a lot on our way home.  We put the baby to bed, consoled our scared puppy (who absolutely HATES fireworks) and went to bed ourselves.  A great holiday!