Light Up the Night

A week ago, our city banned fireworks and all open fires.  Dakota was pretty bummed. The kid LOVES fireworks.  She has been talking about them for months.  So I came up with an idea to keep the 4th special without the big bang.

I whipped up a this little invite using the My Memories Software.  The best part?  I didn't pay a dime for the cute graphics.  They were part of a free kit on mymemories.com
I sent them out to my lovely family via facebook, so no fee for printing, either.

We were excitedly getting ready for our big night when...

The Quail fire started 2 blocks from our house.  That was Tuesday afternoon.  At 7:30 that evening, a police officer came by the house and told us that we were on evacuation warning.  And with 2 little kids with severe asthma, this was the last straw.  We loaded up and headed to my mom's for the night.  Our prayers were answered and the fire moved away from our home.  We were able to get back home yesterday morning, and we were back on for our party.  Yay!

We started out with some good food 

Then we threw on our suits and went for a dip 

 When the sun went down, the real fun began.

 After I took this picture, we taped 2 rings together.  That gave them a little more weight and make it easier to get it on the pole. (I found the glow bracelets at Hobby Lobby 15/$.99)

 I filled the tub with beans and glow in the dark prizes.

When I do this next year, we will do this while it is still light so that the toys can charge in the sun.

By the time the kids went digging, the toys weren't glowing anymore and we had to shine a light on the bucket so they could find them.

(All items in the bucket were from the Target $ Spot.  If you can't find them in the front dollar section, ask an employee if they have a $ spot somewhere else in the store.  Mine has another one in the far back corner.)

We took pictures with all our fun glow in the dark goodies.

(The middle picture is what the fire looked like from my backyard in the dark.  The middle-right is the fire in the background.)

Tips for taking pictures of glow sticks:

*Turn off your flash

*Change your focus to manual

This makes it so that your shutter will stay open and you don't have to wait for the camera to try to focus in the dark.

We had a few other glow in the dark toys that we didn't get pictures of:

*Beach ball with glow bracelets inside for Volleyball (I put 5 bracelets inside before blowing it up)

*Glow balls for the pool (found by the pool toys at Walmart.  They were $2.50/each and have replaceable batteries.)

*Punch balloons with glow bracelets inside (worked best with 2 in each balloon.  I bought the balloons at Walmart in the party favor aisle.)

*Glow Straws (found at Walmart in the party favor aisle.  They come in a pack of 8 for $2-3 )

*Glow necklaces (bought on Halloween clearance at Walmart, but they carry them year round in the party favor aisle.)

This party was SO MUCH FUN!  And more little-kid friendly than fireworks.  Not to mention a lot cheaper than an extravagant firework show.  We will definitely be making this an annual tradition!

We may just break out the leftover glow sticks and play again on Pioneer Day.

How about all my Utah friends out there?  What are your plans for Pioneer Day?

Are fireworks banned in your area?