4th of July

After several years of attending 4th of July parades, this year we were all in one! Yes, all the Ponesses marched in the Westerville Independence Day Parade.  For some reason, Westerville starts its parade at 1pm rather than first thing in the morning. That made for a very hot parade.

Matt and Michael marched (or rode) with the Blendon-Westerville Little League. Michael loved waving at everyone and kept telling Matt "Look, we know them, they are waving at us."

 Luke, Justin and I walked with Koguryo. It was a small group at this parade because most of the teens were in the various marching bands and lots of folks were out of town. Luke marched, cartwheeled, kicked and jumped for 2 miles in 90 degree heat. Master Circle's wife was driving the jeep and she thought Luke was awesome and looked like Koguryo's very own drum major.



 Justin rode, whined, poured water on himself and collected flags as the bigger kids got tired of carrying them. He had six by the end. It was a LONG parade. I barely made it. Then we were off to dinner with at the Martinezes, which I didn't take pictures of because I still felt terrible from the parade and Justin was a wreck. However, by 8pm, back home, Justin had recovered a bit, so we did this:

 We drove to a field with several hundred of our closest friends to watch the fireworks. They were AWESOME!! Thumbs down for a miserable parade, Westerville, but thumbs up for great fireworks!

Luke was 4 before I let him stay up for fireworks. Michael was 3. Here is the napless 15-month-old thirdborn at 10pm eating a lollipop the size of his head.