Hope you’re still celebrating the 4th this weekend!

To keep the party going (and thanks to a Facebook memory you’ll see below), I took a look back at Independence Days past, and here’s what I found:

• Apparently I didn’t cover this event every year
• I DID provide some coverage for 2012, a year of ONE kid and some kittens
• In 2013, I got an electric car (I guess that was better than blogging about fireworks?)
• The entire summer of 2014 was filled with “I’m very pregnant” blog posts… sorry?
• In 2015, we were in Palm Springs for the 4th, and I blogged about it a month late
• 2016 Independence Day was the first year of the matchy-matchy dresses (one of which is in the photo above)
• For 2018 celebration, I blogged 2 months later, and there were 2 terrible hats
• And as you can see, 2019 was the year of Zoe choreography (3 seconds of awesome):

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In case you’re interested, there actually was some “work” that went into that 3-second show, since synchronizing with a little sister doesn’t always go as planned:

(CLICK FOR VIDEO)

Close, but not quite. This year we again enjoyed a fun pool party at our friend’s (Maggie & Gary) home, with great food and some light “poppers” in the backyard. And again, by my special request, we drove home DURING the fireworks and watched displays from the freeway popping up all around us. No parking, no crowds, no getting out of a crowded parking lot to get home.

Thanks to all her hard work swimming, Ella fell asleep during the freeway fireworks even with Zoe and I pointing them out and yelling, WOO HOO!, all the way home.

If you want to feel like time is moving TOO FAST, feel free to check out my Facebook memory from 3 years ago beside this year’s photo of our cute much-less-little girls:

Dresses hold up GREAT when you only wear them once (maybe twice) a year!

And so wraps an almost-on-time 4th of July blog for the Johnson Family. Hope you’re enjoying the last of this long weekend surrounded by friends and family, relaxing and remembering how lucky we are to live here. Even after eating pasta for 8 straight days in beautiful Italy, I wouldn’t trade my USA life (well, not full-time anyway).

CIAO!