a big fourth weekend!

…aka. rocco’s first 4th of july AND last weekend as a baby! my baby boy! his first birthday is tomorrow! and oh, how could i forget how huge i felt last year celebrating america while awaiting his appearance. 🙂

backing up a smidge, though… we had so much fun on the 3rd as we celebrated the birthday of a sweet and precious friend with lots of fun people and fishies and crawdads in the river! our babies basically decided they would like to just live in the river forever and become river merpeople.

…at the end of the evening, we had to carry an exhausted and loudly crying maddalena away from her newfound happy place, the poor thing! she is a perfect princess, but she is also definitely no sissy. i am constantly so proud of that girl… she would’ve happily carried around a net full of crawdads and minnows for hours! however, we had a fireworks viewing to attend that night from the farmhome porch, and it surely did not disappoint. 🙂

and the day of the 4th! we headed to downtown franklin, where steven’s parents live, to check out the festival going on… the hot spot obviously being the petting zoo and pony rides. madd was borderline hangry, though, and took the opportunity to test out a couple of new smile styles, which made me giggle a little bit confus-ed-ly. haha. but, bless her, i love her so so much. she was a good sport! and as you can imagine, that situation was fixed right up as soon as she was served a good helping of banana pudding!

…the little franklin square is just so, so adorable. there’s lots of history there in that area, so it felt perfectly quaint and american on the 4th! also, it should be noted that i still get very excited over petting zoos [the little baby goats and sheep always seem generally pleased with the lifestyle], but pony rides make me legitimately want to cry. those poor ponies! but… every kid likes a pony ride! and maddalena’s mount, s’mores, was just precious. we made sure to give him some love and tell him he was a good boy. 🙂

i always feel like it’s not a proper independence day without sparklers, but we failed to get any this year! waaa! however! the day ended with rain, so that’s okay. stevo grilled a little dinner just before the showers hit, rocco got to work on some of his own cooking and cleaning… God said “hey i can do pretty things in the sky!” and then we watched a little movie.

…and now!!! ’tis the last day of my baby’s official babyhood. rocco turns ONE tomorrow!!! so i am off to go feel all the things, clean, and prep.

hope everyone had a fabulous long weekend!!