4th of July

Not quite ready to sleep yet, and feeling a little bit productive- so I thought I would blog before hitting the sack for the night.

If you know me at all, you know that my favorite holiday is the 4th of July. I absolutely love it. Why? Because it's so chill. You just spend the day relaxing, swimming, eating great BBQ food, spending time with family, and reflecting on freaking awesome our country is and remember the blessing of our freedom. Plus, there's fireworks! What the heck could be better than that??

We had a great holiday this year. We spent part of the afternoon at our friend's, the Roach's, house- swimming and snacking. We should have gone over earlier in the day- we didn't want to leave! We were having such a great time. Xander loved playing with all the puppies and Nathan and I had a lovely time visiting with our friends. It's nice to spend time around other grown-ups! Haha

After only couple hours, we had to scurry over to my parent's house for dinner and fireworks. My mom and sister made ribs and Xander LOVED them. I took way to many pictures, but it was just too funny to watch him devour the ribs with just his 4 little baby teeth. I picked out some of my favorites to share here:

See, this is why I call him Xander the Barbarian! Too funny.

Once again, we decided to a firework show in the back yard- but this year we decided to see what our camera was capable of and took some pictures. 

Not gonna lie, I usually HATE looking at people's backyard firework photos. They almost all look the same- like a giant flame shooting out of a cardboard cylinder and just a ton of smoke. It's hard to capture the beauty of an of it because it's so fast, and so bright, and most cameras just aren't made to take those kinds of photos. Our little Canon Rebel was up for the challenge though- and I think I got some pretty neat shots! I got a bunch of lousy ones too- but here is a taste of the Sanders Backyard Fireworks Spectacular:

I got some cool shots of Bethany with her sparklers too! This is something that I want to experiment more with down the line- it's a pretty neat effect.

I couldn't have asked for a better Independence Day! We even caught the City of Mesa fireworks show on our drive home. It was lovely. Can hardly wait for next year!

12 months!

These pictures were taken like a month late- but I figured I had to finish out the monthly photos. I couldn't just leave them hanging at 11. These were so hard to take! This kid won't sit still; he is so busy all the time.
We got a few decent shots though.

I love this picture! He was like, "Hey, I remember you!" 

I gave him the book to help him sit still for a minute or two. He seriously LOVES this book. We read it like 3 times a day.

Once he lost interest in the book, he discovered the lens cap on the night stand and it was all over. All he wanted to do after that was put the cap back on the lens! 

I was kinda surprised to find that I didn't have many photos of him from this month. It's probably because my iPhone thinks that it's memory is full most of the time.

Here are the few that I did have though:

Stay tuned in the next day or so for a sentimental mommy post and recap of Xander's first year.