4th weekend!

This was SUCH a fun weekend! Graham and I have had such busy weekends lately with traveling and weddings and all kinds of fun stuff, but we have not had many low key weekends where we just got to hang out as a family. So on top of being a holiday weekend, this was just a fun weekend for us to all be together and do whatever we wanted! So Saturday morning before Carrie's first nap, we walked down the street to Julia Green's playground with Carrie and the dogs and let the dogs just run free in their fenced playground while we played with Carebear. The dogs loved it and the 3 of us loved it too! Here is Graham pushing Carebear in the swing...
She loves the swing, but was excited to play on the slide this time too!

Tilly loved running around until she finally tired. And she loves the USA...
Yep, while Carrie was climbing on the slide, Tilly was running through the playground equipment. No surprise there...

After Carrie's nap, we had another fun activity! Uncle Jay (my cousin, but more like brother) and Tayler asked us if we wanted to take Carrie and go to the zoo with them! I had not really thought about taking Carrie to the zoo this summer since she is so young, but it sounded like fun so we went! It turned out to be so fun and Carrie was a trooper! I forgot how many fun animals there are at the Nashville Zoo. Made me want to go back to Africa right now! (If people would stop hunting the beautiful animals in Africa, that would be great because I would love for Carrie and anyone else to get to experience these beautiful creatures in the wild, but that is another blog for another day so I will get off my soapbox. How could you ever shoot something so beautiful?? Ok. Done. I promise.) We saw lynx and zebras, elephants and tigers, meerkats and monkeys. We even saw the cougars being fed!

The highlight for Carebear was when dada bought her a monkey stuffed animal! He actually let her see it in the gift shop, then went to take it away and she had a meltdown so we bought it! It was worth it to see her so happy!
A little family pic in front of the giraffes...
This picture makes me laugh. For anyone who didn't see Tayler and I, it definitely looks like 2 dads and a Carrie...2 men and a baby.
Carebear with Uncle Jay and Tayler...
Carrie was POOPED after the zoo so the rest of the day we took it easy to prepare for the 4th! Sunday morning we had our neighborhood parade which only allowed Carrie a short nap, but was so fun. She wore her holiday dress made by yours truly, the first thing she has worn that I made so that was fun (jenny monogrammed it for me so that completed the outfit for sure!) Here are her and dada at the brunch before the parade...
Brunch...it was yummy! We ate while the kids decorated their bikes/wagons for the parade.
Our cute neighbor Mary Grace holding 'Baby Carrie'
Mary Grace wanted to pull Carrie in the parade in her wagon which was great with us! It was hot! She also helped us decorate Carrie's wagon and it turned out so cute and festive!
Not real sure what is going on, but looking cute!

The Camps joined us for the parade and brought their 2 cuties Emalyn and Maddie which was so fun! Here is sweet Emalyn (6 months) with some ballon static hair!
She is too cute!!!
For a baby who is not sold on table food, Carrie sure thought Maddie's doughnut looked good!
Everyone kept asking if they were all cousins because of their little outfits! Jenny sews too and kind of inspired me to get into it! They all looked so cute in their dresses...
Happy little girl :)
After a good nap, we had a birthday party for one of Carrie's little buddies, Jet O'Rear, who was born 4th of July last year. It was Carrie's first birthday party to attend and it was so cute and fun. She was LOVING all Jet's toys. She played NONSTOP (in fact one lady stopped me and asked if she was mine and then said "she is going to conquer the world!" hahah. She was like "She hasn't stopped moving yet!" It cracked us up). Here are the kids playing...

Jet was too cute with his smash cake and the party was so fun. Carrie was starting to fall apart towards the end because of the busy day she had so we took her home and got her in bed a little early. Afterwards, Graham and I got some wine and chairs and set up in the front yard to watch the fireworks that our neighbors do. They do an awesome job and it was such a treat for us to feel like we were out of the house. We love fireworks as you know if you were at our wedding so we were glad not to have to miss out! It was such a fun 4th!

After seeing Carrie at the birthday party, we realized her toys are kind of lacking. Jet's were bigger and better and she was loving it so we already hit up Target today and stocked Carrie's playroom with some new and improved items. She is having a blast with them!

I hope you all had a great and relaxing holiday weekend!!