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Scrapbook: A Celebration of Water and Fire

August 10, 2015 by Carrie Anne Leave a Comment

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When I was a kid, the Fourth of July was a big, exciting deal. It started early in the afternoon at my aunt and uncle’s house with swimming. Later, there would be dinner, and then my cousins and I would collectively lose our mind over fireworks. If we were very, very lucky, there’d be night swimming. As I got older a lot of the excitement over the holiday was replaced with fear over gunshots, illegal firework injuries, and house fires. This year, even after the holiday was over, I was awakened several times by loud, certainly illegal booms, at three o’clock in the morning. Some I didn’t just hear, I felt. As a holiday, it’s become somewhat terrifying.

Now much of my joy in the holiday comes from watching the kids enjoy it in the same way I used to. The holiday still sparkles with water and fire. This year drove deep into the remote countryside of Denair to celebrate. (Actually, Denair is a suburban hamlet in a rural area that isn’t remote at all, but as I lack all cell phone service I feel like I may as well be in the middle of a National Park.)

The day started off with water as the next generation of kids played in the pool and sprinklers.

As the sun began to set, we dried them off, fed them a snack, and got them back in their clothes. Then we moved to the front yard for our own private firework show.

My cousin plied the kids with a seemingly endless supply of sparklers, which intimidated Isobel at first, but by the end she wielded two sparklers at once like an expert fire dancer.

I always seem to have an abundance of glow sticks on my person (this year’s stock were leftovers from this project), and the past couple years it’s been my tradition to bring a plethora of them to add to the firework-watching experience.

Elias was old enough this year to sit outside and watch the show, which he was totally into as long as he was in my lap. And I mean, I was not allowed to get up for a second, or my totally calm baby turned into crazypants meltdown baby. But he felt safe in my lap, so there he stayed. He enjoyed the glow stick bounty, and held on to his stoically as he watched the show.

We had a perfect view of three other firework shows happening around us: two clearly professional, and one clearly illegal. We stopped our little show several times to watch the sky. My cousin passed out ice cream sandwhiches and we cuddled on blankets spread across the grass. When the kids weren’t dancing to the flashing fireworks and waving their glow sticks around, they were covering their ears in anticipation of unnecessarily loud fireworks.

The unsung hero of this and many July Fourth celebrations in the patriotic ladder, which somehow avoids being blown up year after year. Happy America, ladder!

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Filed Under: Holiday Special, Scrapbook Tagged With: Babies, Baby, Backyard, California, celebration, Children, Domestic Life, Domesticity, Family, family life, fire, fire work, fire works, firework, Fireworks, fourth of july, frugal, Holiday, Holiday Special, Home Life, independance day, Independence Day, july fourth, Kids, Life, Motherhood, Parenthood, Parenting, Photography, Seasonal, seasons, sprinklers, Summer, Thrift, Thrifted, Thrifting, Thrifty, Water

Party Time: Isobel’s Sweet Birthday Treats

June 6, 2015 by Carrie Anne 4 Comments

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Isobel’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year (it was back in April but I’m just now getting around to posting about it), and it was the day before Easter so we planned her party for the following weekend. I don’t think anyone we knew had any elaborate Easter plans, or even planned on going out of town for it, but given my health situation I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy Easter with my family if we did her party the day before. Our plans are never elaborate, either, but we were looking forward to our annual egg hunt with our cousins and getting together with family. It was an especially good thing we waited because this year Anthony had a killer cold this weekend and was down for the count.

We did want to celebrate her actual birthday in a celebratory,  but low-key, and thrifty way. Anthony’s cold was pretty awful at this point, so we celebrated by having a “girl’s day.” We started the day by wearing a fancy outfit–a dress her Tia Gloria, who was visiting from Guatemala, made by hand just for her. Then we went to the bakery for a special birthday treat.

I let her pick a treat for now and then another one to take home and share with the family. She picked a pretty package of macarons and a double-chocolate cupcake. I smuggled in a candle and a lighter in my bag, so when we sat down to eat I could sing to her and she could make a wish.


I’m not sure if I was allowed to have an open flame in the bakery, so we did it as quickly as inconspicuously as possible. But she loved the surprise! And I didn’t get arrested, so, whew.

She ate the whole thing. I was so proud.

She tried the macarons but did not like them so I graciously decided I would eat them all for her. As a mother, it’s the kind of sacrifice I signed up to make.

After we finished licking frosting off the plate (me) and setting things on fire (me, again), we stayed another twenty minutes or so by the cake decorating window and watched the ladies work. Isobel really wants to decorate a cake some time, which sounds like a fun thing to do with Valerie, who is a demon baker. We picked up some chocolate chip cookies for Anthony and spent the whole rest of the day playing video games and watching movies and listening to the demands of Isobel, our six-year-old dictator.

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Filed Under: Party Time, Scrapbook Tagged With: Birthday, birthdays, celebration, Children, Cupcakes, Family, frugal, Frugality, Fun, fun little thinngs, Kids, kindergarten, little things, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography, six, Thrifted, Thrifty, thrifty celebrating, thrifty celebrations

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