Celebrating America

Since July 4th happened to be the same week as my family was visiting, we had to get some fireworks going.  We did a few at our house earlier in the week, and then we went over to John's parents' house on the 4th for a good old-fashioned cookout, complete with America-themed dessert and a round of badminton (John and I won, just saying).

Because I am ridiculous (and so are my nieces), I made them do some fashion blogger poses:

Delia 

Matti 

The girls loved the fireworks!  I tried to get candid shots, but I was too slow, so here are some pictures of them re-enacting their excitement when the big fireworks went off:

 

We had SO.MANY.SPARKLERS!

As you can probably tell, we had a great evening!
On the topic of my outfit - I wore pink/white/yellow instead of red/white/blue, but I did wear my crazy flag shirt during the day.

Top: Gap
Shorts: Loft

Sunshine Yellow

Whenever I buy something new, I pretty much go straight to Pinterest and search for ideas of how to style it.  I found this outfit when I was looking for mint jeans inspiration.  I really love the bright yellow and mint together, so I was anxious to put my spin on it, but then it was cold and snowy and rainy every day!  I refused to bring down the brightness with boots, so I waited patiently for the sun to return.  Spring arrived just in time for Marion to pick Yellow as the Trend of the Month, so it all worked out!

My plan involved wearing these shoes, but then I remembered that I needed to do a fair amount of walking between buildings for meetings, so I went with a more practical heel.

Are you wearing yellow this spring?  Go link up!

Tank and Jeans: Gap
Cardigan: Target (and then dyed by me)
Shoes: BCBGenerarion

Santa Fe, Are you there?

Every time we go to Santa Fe, I get this song stuck in my head for the whole day.  Any other Newsies fans out there?   It was pretty much my favorite movie when I was a kid.  I am really hoping the Broadway version comes to Omaha soon, so I can see it live.  I think I heard once that Christian Bale is embarrassed about starring in this movie, but I mean, look at those awesome dance moves.  Who would believe he'd be Batman someday? 

Anyway, we went into Santa Fe for two very specific purposes:

1. Eat lunch at Tomasita's.  It's another favorite restaurant in the area.
2. Find a store for me to buy Insurgent.  I finally got Divergent from the library before we left and thought it would last me the whole week we were gone.  I was very wrong, mostly because I stayed up super late every night reading. 

We ended up at Target, where I found the book AND some cobalt sandals for $4 - BONUS!  (Dreams really do come true in Santa Fe!)

Then we got lunch at Tomasita's.  It is right by the train depot, so we even saw the trains that Jack Kelly dreamed of taking to Santa Fe.  So exciting.

Unfortunately, neither John nor his grandparents had any idea what I was talking about with the Santa Fe song.  I'm not sure what movies they were watching in the early 90s, but apparently they missed the live action Disney musical.