July 4th at Carter-Finley

The city of Raleigh puts on a great fireworks show at the fairgrounds every year. For the past couple of years, our church has had a get together over at Carter-Finley Stadium to eat and watch the show (it's a great view from there). We went last year and had a great time, so we made sure we were back from the beach so we could go again this year. There were about 200 people there from our church. Grandma, Grandpa, MeMaw, Paw Paw, Aunt Jen, and Unkie were all there too. Mia really enjoyed it, except she thought the fireworks were too loud. Here are some pics.

Mia eating a huge cookie. And yes, that was pretty much her dinner that day because it's all she would eat.

When the fireworks started. She didn't really like them because they were too loud.

Mia and her friend Joella (they are only a few days apart) thought it would be better to watch the fireworks from the car. They pretty much played and ate cheerios more than they watched fireworks, but they had fun.

On a side note, Mia is doing really well going potty. She is wearing big girl underwear most of the time now (except naptime and bedtime), and staying dry! She still won't poop in the potty, and pretty much times it when she's wearing a pull-up. I haven't figured out how we are going to change that yet. We have gotten brave and gone out places with her big girl underwear on and she hasn't had an accident yet. She still wears a pull-up to church and on long car rides, but hopefully that will change soon.

Rides

While we were at the beach, we decided to take Mia to ride some rides. When we were younger, we used to go to the Grand Prix at Myrtle since it wasn't too far from Ocean Isle, so we thought we would take Mia there since she had never been. Well, we drove and drove and never saw the Grand Prix! We ended up all the way at Broadway and Unkie used his Blackberry to look it up and we found out that the Grand Prix closed in 2006! I guess we should have thought about that before we drove so much.....we stopped at Broadway and thankfully, they had some rides. We had already told Mia she could ride rides so it would have been awful if we couldn't find any. I think it was the highlight of her trip because she is still talking about the rides, especially the "little red car that slings us around." She loved all of them, even the ones that we weren't sure she was big enough for......Here are some pictures. She also rode the airplane, boats, and carousel.

The red car that slings us around. It was on a little track, and when it got to the turn, it would sling you around really fast.

There were a ton of rides, but of course Mia had to sit in a shopping cart.

Motorcycle

Riding tea cups with Aunt Jen. She really liked that one and rode it with MeMaw too.

Cousins

Mia had fun playing with her cousins at the beach. They don't get to spend a lot of time together since everyone is so busy and live in different places, but it's fun when they do get together. I didn't get pictures of Ellen or John, but got the rest of the cousins.

Michael sharing his boogie board with Mia

Mia and Robert playing in the sand

Out in the ocean with Daddy and Sarah

Kristin, Madison, Brandon, Great-Aunt Sissy, and Great-Uncle Bob's sister Annette

Jacob

Mia and Madison

Brad, Kristen, and Colin

Ocean Isle Beach

We spent a few days at Ocean Isle Beach over the Fourth of July week with family. Mia had a great time with MeMaw, Paw Paw, Aunt Jen, Unkie, Oscar, and her great aunts, great uncles, and cousins. She loved everything about it! She went out in the ocean, played in the sand, and jumped in and out of the pool. She was so good with everything until she got some water in her eyes. Then she would say, "I need a towel! I got water in my eyes!" Such a drama queen! We took so many pictures and I couldn't choose, so I made them small. Just click on the picture to see full size.

Daddy took her out in the ocean....

Running wild chasing bubbles our last night there.