And a happy Fifth of July to you, too

Yesterday our friends invited us up to watch fireworks at their house, and we had to include some pictures here of that fun get-together. The girls stayed up late for them, until they were asking to go to bed, and we put them to sleep in portable cribs there and got to stay to see the show. We're hoping their ease with a lack of bedtime routine bodes well for camping in a few weeks!

Here, Clara shows her "olive fingers" Karen helped her make:

One of the girls' best friends, Chkai, eating one of the hamburger cupcakes (the girls ended up loving them too, but were much harder to get pictures of!):

One of the girls' other best friends, Charlie, showing off "surprise" for them:

Elena and Clara were both the youngest ones at the party, and the only girls (even when our other friends arrived later on). Here, Elena draws Charlie away from the wild play into some refined conversation:

And here's the early crew at the party, hanging together. Clara and Elena make nice bookends in any posed picture, don't you think?

Chkai and his girls:

When the girls awoke the next morning, they discovered Chkai's motorized car. They were amazed! As you can expect, the rest of the morning was spent driving around. Luckily, they didn't figure out how Chkai was making it go on his turn, and just pushed each other around on their turns. Every time Clara got in and the car didn't move, though, she would throw up her hands and say: "Oh, man!"