Oh Say Can You See...

We had a fun-filled 4th of July.  We started things off with our annual church 4th of July breakfast.  It's usually held at the church parking lot but someone forgot to reserve the building and lucky for us, they reserved a big park with a playground, ball fields, and plenty of room for the kids bike parade as well.   Hopefully this will become the new tradition.  We kicked things off with a flag ceremony before a delicious pancake breakfast with dutch oven potatoes.  After breakfast there were a couple of kickball games where Randy pulled a muscle in his leg (old people problems) and Marcus worked up a sweat reliving his recess days.  The other boys played at the park and rode their bikes in the bike parade.  The music was blaring, the adults were visiting with friends and playing ball, kids were playing and laughing, and it was a really great way to start the 4th of July.  Plus it was warm enough that we didn't need to wear jackets and it didn't rain.  Score!

I love that my boys know to get in the food line quickly.  Here's Landon and his friend eating quick so they can go play kickball

Later that afternoon Randy took Landon and Parker to the mountain bike park.  We'd gone the day before for the first time ever and they quickly became obsessed.  It's so fun!  I stayed home to prepare for our BBQ and did something totally unlike me.  I got some crazy idea from Pinterest to make a balloon garland and blew up a hundred balloons and strung them together.  Like all things on Pinterest it takes twice as long and looks half as good but it was still easy enough that I'll probably do it again and made me feel like I tried to put some effort into hosting.  I usually keep things very simple and unimpressive.

Note to self:  lots of balloons provides lots of entertainment for boys of all ages

That's me doing something totally unheard of:  Pinterest!

Be impressed.

We had a few families over for burgers and hot dogs and of course our grill quit working as soon as Randy put the meat on and had was halfway through cooking them.  Luckily our neighbors let us finish cooking everything on their grill and even luckier that no one got sick afterwards.  The burgers were delicious when we finally got to eat them.

None of these kids are mine but they sure looked cute with their sparklers!

God bless America!