fourth festivities

I love long weekends, especially when they are packed full of summer fun :) Even though K and I sort of celebrated the 4th of July on Saturday, we went all-out on the actual Holiday.

When we woke up in the morning, all we had to do was step outside. The town parade went right down the street in front of our apartment!

After sweltering in the sun for the hour-long event (only in Vermont will you see a tractor pulling a band in a hay cart, a hippie-dippie "solar bus," and a couple of girls in a jeep dressed as sweet corn. The only thing missing from the Richmond parade was Bread & Puppet... the dancing puppet troupe has always been my favorite part of parades in the past, but I guess Richmond is a little too small & far away to make the trip worthwhile.


K and I retired to our comparably cool apartment (which isn't saying much--it's still crazy hot in there at all hours of the day and night) for a brief interlude and then headed back out into the sun to partake in the field-day festivities at the nearby park.

I was primarily interested in the flea market...

...where I managed to find a dangly, neck-wobbling bird carved from coconut, a beaded necklace, and a matching bracelet all for $15. We hung the bird from one of our living room windows:

We then promptly fell asleep (the combination of two late nights in a row + hot hot heat = siesta time) and woke in time to eat lots and lots of watermelon, watch some Northern Exposure, and headed back to the park for the evening's fireworks display.

We watched the sun set...

...played with sparklers...

...saw an extremely loud and incredibly close display of explosively brilliant fireworks (may have been the best fireworks I've ever seen, mainly because they were right above us)...

...and put on a little light show of our own before heading home.

After spending all day yesterday doing our darnedest to keep cool, K and I decided that it was a perfect day for a baseball game & we went to Burlington to see the Lake Monsters play the Williamsport Crosscutters at Centennial Field. It was a lovely night (still hot...) and we stayed for all nine innings, even though the Monsters lost in the end :( I love baseball games, and definitely intend to catch a few more before the season is through!

I hope you all had an amazing Independence Day! I'll be back with regular outfit posts tomorrow (K and I are finally doing laundry tonight...).