As of Friday evening, I wasn't even positive what we were going to do to celebrate the 4th of July.  However, yesterday turned out to be just about perfect in my eyes.

My wife had been planning to go garage sale-ing (probably not a word) with her sister yesterday morning, but that didn't work out.  I offered to go instead, since I actually enjoy this, as long as I don't have to start at 6:30am.  :)

We left the house around 9am, and spent 3 hours picking up some amazing deals on books, clothes, toys, and more.  We spent about $18 total and ended up with a vanload of new stuff.  The kids were thrilled to get an armload each.  Not too shabby.

We had a great and healthy lunch at Souper Salad in Round Rock, and my two older daughters are apparently both experiencing a growth spurt, since they ate several plates full of food.  In fact, I think our 8-year-old ate more than I did!

After that, we went shopping for some nice patio furniture at a couple of specialty stores.  We are in the midst of working with a contractor to cover our patio in the next month or two, since we've lived here for almost seven years and never really used it that much.  We found some great stuff which will frankly make me feel like entertaining more often!  The daybed that we bought seems like the type of thing I have only seen in magazines or movies before now.

After finishing up at the furniture place, we headed home to grab a bite before the fireworks show nearby.  I cooked my signature dish, "Noodlemania" (my son named it), then we loaded up and headed to Lake Pflugerville for fireworks.  Thankfully, we live in an area that enables us to take the back way and avoid traffic, so we were seated with 15 minutes of leaving our house.  The show was awesome again - this is the second year for this particular event.  Even our baby enjoyed the fireworks, surprisingly.  I was concerned that the noise would bother her. 

We ended up running into our former next-door neighbors so we sat with them.  It was nice getting a chance to catch up - I still can't believe that their son is graduating next year, since I first met him when he was two years old!

We got home around 10pm, got the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, and spent some time watching "This American Life" before we went to bed.

All things considered, that was one of my favorite days in awhile.  No stress - just special time with my family. 

Thanks for reading!

Photo above via Flickr.com from lepetitsaboteur.