Happy 4th of July-Kind of

We started the day off great!! We had flag pancakes and we loved them! They were delicious.

Then we were off to the beach! The 4th of July has to include water sports. We decided to stop at Walmart for a cooler with wheels and some sand toys. While we were there Brenden tripped and fell, but didn't catch himself. So his smile went from this:

To this:

Can you tell Brenden is taking the picture of himself. I think it is hilarious. Also, I didn't take a picture of his "accident" on purpose, but as I was going through the pictures I found this. You can tell that his teeth are totally in the wrong place. This is after we tried for hours to get a hold of our dentist or a dentist. So the doctor in the ER repositioned his teeth to this position. It is so sad.

So after a trip to the ER and finally one to his Dentist. His new smile looks like this:

Because I am a dentist's daughter, this has been a fear of mine. I saw so many people bring their little kids in with similar situations; but I thought it would never happen to one of my kids. One of the things that made me most sad through all of this was that Brenden made the comment that he would probably not want to smile any more. That made me so sad. I, of course, explained to him that his smile is just as cute as it was before. Luckily, he has been doing plenty of smiling since this all happened. And we ended up having a pretty ok 4th of July after all that.

We still had a BBQ:

We still played in the water:

We played with friends. Thanks Cheryl for coming all the way to get Connor and Noah from me in the ER. Yes, I had 3 kids in the ER. It would have stayed that way, except when they put the IV in Brenden, Connor fainted. So that is when I broke down and asked for help.

We were still able to make homemade ice cream:

I am grateful for the 4th of July. Even this 4th of July. I learned a lot about myself and life. I am grateful to live in the United States of America. I have lived outside of the USA and I know what a blessing it is to live here. I am truly grateful for our freedoms. I am also truly grateful that Brenden didn't have his permanent teeth in yet!