Outdoor Theater

Since we'll be home more this summer than planned, we decided to invest in a little mini projector so we could watch movies outside. We tried it out last week for the first time, watching Toy Story 4 on the patio. It was a lot of fun:

Independence Day 2020

We celebrated at home, of course, because of distancing, but we tried to capture the spirit and ventured out at dusk to watch the fireworks from a parking lot on Pantops:

The Day's Agenda

Dressing for the holiday

First up: festive chalk art

While Abby and I were making a flag cake, Benji took it on himself to make a slide show of Fourth of July through the years. It was really fun to watch

Water gun battle, which felt great int he 90 degree heat

We got this giant jenga at a neighbor's free sale and played it while we dried off

Benji made the tower topple both times, the first on purpose and the second for real

The evening's menu

Watermelon seed spitting contest (Abby won)

We set up at the edge of a parking lot to watch the fireworks on Carter's Mountain, but were actually treated to multiple displays we could see across the valley. There were a few other famlies out in our same spot, but everyone kept their distance

Back home, we set off some of our sparklers and morning glories

Hamilton Watch Party

We were all eager to stream this as soon as it dropped to Disney+, and we decided to do it up right with food and decorations:

Themed snacks for viewing time

Dressing in the spirit

Abby chose to wear the dress she saw it in on Broadway

We had dinner at the intermission (Burr-itos from Chipotle not shown)

Game Buddy

Playing Patchwork with Benji:

Water Fight

The kids got water guns in their summer boxes and Benji had been waiting patiently for a few weeks for water fight night:

Father's Day 2020

We had a low key Father's Day, with lots of junk food and games. We started with a breakfast of McDonald's egg biscuits and Dunkin Doughnuts. After breakfast, Kevin opened his gifts (well, gift. He had already received his gift from the kids in advance and had intercepted one of his other packages in the mail the day before), which included a subscription to Universal Yums, a service which sends a box of snack food from a different country each month. This month was the UK, and we had fun sampling some of the products while playing first Uno and then Terraforming Mars. In the afternoon, we headed to Barracks for Ben and Jerry's ice cream (before dinner, at Kevin's request) and ate it while walking around the Park by the law school.  We picked up Crozet Pizza on the way home and ate it in front of the television while watching The West Wing (also by Kevin's request):

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Garfield's Birthday

Benji was pretty excited about this one. We celebrated with lasagna and cake and the viewing of some episodes of Garfield and Friends: