Independence Day.

We had a great 4th of July-both the day of and the weekend afterwards.  We both had the 4th off and it was miserably hot.  I spent most of the day inside because heat and I do not mix.  I did get Rowdy's pool out for him so he could splash around in it.  Trevor, on the other hand, mowed the lawn and hoed the garden.  Bless his heart.  We had a nice quiet afternoon before the whole family arrived for potluck dinner then fireworks.  Everyone brought good food and the house was packed.  My dad brought some firecrackers and Elliot and Parker got a kick out of those.  Speaking of those two, they got pretty dirty playing in the sandbox so we washed their clothes and put them in Trevor's tan army shirts.  They looked like little Monks.  Anyway, we found a spot to watch the fireworks here in town and they were really pretty good!  Parker (5) even said "Woah! I bet the fireflies are saying this is even cooler than our light!"  He was pretty impressed, jumping at each firework, saying it was his favorite, with many "WOAH!"s in between.  (Trevor took some photos on the 4th and I've been procrastinating this post waiting to get them from him, but we've been pretty busy.  I'll add them later.)

Since I don't work Fridays anyway, I took Thursday off too and just made a big, long weekend out of the 4th.  Trevor had to go back to school Thursday and Friday though.  Saturday we joined John, Mari, Calen, Linnea, Jon, Moe, Jon, Nicole, Kourtney, Shannon and all of the kiddos on Elysian for some fun at the cabin.  

   
We started the day on the water trampoline while some of the others went out for a boat ride and tubing.

Then kayaking and paddle boating.

 

My dad got us some fireworks a couple weeks ago and we knew it would be best to save them for the lake...good plan!  They were awesome!

 

And when the bugs got too bad, we headed inside for game time.  We started with Trivial Pursuit, a very old Trivial Pursuit, but that didn't go so well since many of the answers were as old as the game itself.  We switched to Mad Gab which was much more entertaining.

Hopefully you all had as much fun this past week/weekend as we did!

-A