Holiday cool // Aminah Thomas cools off in the James River during a visit with her family to the Downtown waterfront by Brown’s Island on Monday, the eve of Independence Day. Throughout the Richmond area, families enjoyed an extended holiday weekend at the river, neighborhood cookouts, local parks and to see fireworks. Please see more photos, B3.

Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press Workers continue to pack and clear out the offices of delegates and senators at the General Assembly Building, 201 N. 9th St. in Capitol Square, which is slated for demolition later this year. The boxes are being moved two blocks to the Pocahontas Building at 900 E. Main St., which will be the legislature’s office center until a replacement building is completed on the site of the current building. The next step comes on Tuesday, July 11, when the state will sell surplus office equipment and other items to the public, government agencies and public schools. The sale is 9 a.m. for agencies and schools, with the public able to shop at 11 a.m. A portion of the General Assembly Building dates to 1912, when it was built for a bank. The building has housed the offices of state legislators since 1976. The governor and General Assembly have set aside $300 million for the new building and a new parking deck for Capitol Square. The money also will pay for renovation of Old City Hall, now part of the Capitol Square complex of state buildings.

Sunflower in west end

Richmonders fired up their backyard grills and headed to parks, pools and rivers to kick back during the weekend and ease into Fourth of July festivities and activities Monday and Tuesday.

Homes and people sported the colors of the holiday. At right, the American flag flies at a house in the 2600 block of Broad Street in the East End, where dog statues also sport patriotic red, white and blue.

Wearing red, white and blue, Paulette Frye, left, leads her granddaughter, Maria Miles, 4, and her sister, Claudette Miles, to Dogwood Dell by the Carillon in Byrd Park, where hundreds of people on Tuesday spread blankets, put up lawn chairs and brought picnic baskets filled with goodies to enjoy music and entertainment before the annual fireworks display.

George Mason University students Kayla Evans of Piscataway, N.J., and her boyfriend, Dante Coleman of Richmond, take cover under a tree in Byrd Park during brief rain showers before the fireworks.

Veda Gilmore takes food off the grill on Tuesday during the annual July Fourth neighborhood cookout in her backyard at 25th and W streets in Church Hill.

Area residents enjoy the cooling James River near Brown’s Island on Monday,