July 4th Do Over

Emily and Tess dressed in patriotic style on July 4th. Tess had a play date in the afternoon but we spent the morning doing crafts at home. I came up with a few fun yarn creations. The girls dubbed them Miss Octi and the yarn babies. They like to pretend Octi has super powers and can swim around and save people.

Still, it felt strange to be away from home for Independence Day. I have gone up to the Adirondack every summer of my life except for the year that Tess was born. When the calendar switches to July it just feels right to go to Keene Valley. I found myself really quite homesick on that day. In hindsight I wish I'd made more proactive plans to celebrate the day in some suitably American way.

We ended up just eating take out for dinner that night so we decided for a do over of sorts on Saturday. We headed back into Darling Harbour, played on the playground, had pizza and ice cream for dinner and then watched fireworks. Fireworks are a Sydney specialty. They put on a big display for New Year's Eve. They do fireworks for Australia Day and many other reasons and they also put them on every single Saturday throughout the year. These were clearly unrelated to the 4th and the US but they felt fitting none the less.

While in touristy Darling Harbour we also picked up some postcards to send to friends. Here are Tess's drawings of the Harbour Bridge with dots as people walking up and down and a ferry underneath.

I can tell she's also getting really excited for soccer in September.