Happy 4th of July!

I just wanted to say how grateful I am that my family and I get to live in this wonderful free country. We are so blessed to have all the freedoms that humans deserve, like the right to say what we want, and choose what career we want, and who we want to marry, and what religion we want to follow, and so many other things. We get to vote for our own leaders. We get to send all our children to school. We have so much, and I am just grateful that I get to raise our children here, and that we have so many wonderful men and women willing to serve our country and protect those rights for our family. Truly, God bless America!
As far as festivities for the day, we got to do a couple of things to celebrate. We went up to our cousins' house, the Wests, and they invited us to go tour a navy aircraft carrier that was docked in the Port of Everett for a while. We left Adam in the caring hands of Steve's Aunt Julia and went off. It was amazing! It was huge, and yet after seeing the size of the jets, it seemed rather small for planes... we got to ride up and down on the aircraft elevator, see and hold huge rifles, and ask a million questions of all the naval officers on board. It was the coolest experience ever, and seemed very appropriate for the 4th.
Then, we headed home to see the fireworks. On the road beside the Sound, the water was covered with evenly spaced private boats, awaiting the show (quite the way to do it if you know someone with a boat). Seattle is in the top five best 4th of July displays in the U.S., so we were really excited! We could see about half of the fireworks from our window, so we turned on the TV to see the rest and catch the music. It was spectacular!

*p.s.-- Keep tuning in for pictures. We forgot to put our memory card in our camera for the trip, so we have to get the pictures from Melanie first.