Celebrating America!

Happy Independence Day!  We had a fun, relaxing, and family filled 4th of July weekend. More to come on the 4th.....

For 2 weeks, I was enrolled in Summer Institute.  This is a program through the University that allows kids to have fun learning through a variety of courses.  I chose Budding Artist and Camping Adventures... I loved both of them!  For Budding Artist, I came home with lots of cool projects~ the art teacher is someone who Mommy used to teach with and she was lots of fun.  My masterpieces included this tie-dye type of drawing, Mona Lisa with a twist, Leonardo Di Vinci Inventions, and an ocean scene.  

Here is my invention... it is titled, "A cleaner-bedder maker machine" and it does just that.  The arms come up (see the drawing/painting for details), it cleans, fluffs and then makes the bed.  I had to name a price to sell this amazing invention, so for as little as $200, you can have one of these :)  I am an inventor already! My Mom wishes we had 4 of these suckers in our house.  I don't have any cool projects to show you from Camping Adventures, but we had a tent in our classroom, went on hikes, had simple s'mores, and I even got to be the "garbage man" on our litter hike (I proudly told Mom and then she made me scrub when I got home). Summer Institute is my only "academic" activity for the summer, so now I can relax and slack off.

Back to our 4th of July weekend... all of our cousins were "home" to celebrate with us (Emmett is still a bit too small for the tube yet, but here are 4 of us "BIG" cousins).  We spent a great deal on the lake tubing, swimming, and waterskiing!  Kyra is 12 years old, Bennett is 7 years old, and Emmett is 1 1/2 years old now (and his baby brother or baby sister is due at the end of August!)

 As usual, the lake is turning a brilliant green from the algae that plagues the lakes around the area....

 Cooper's up on his own skis.....

 Daddy says I am ready to be on my own, but I still wanted him for support.  He mostly let me do the loop independently, but was "with me" just in case :)

Daddy's turn to show his barefooting skills... backwards, one foot.  In case you are curious, barefooting speed is typically 40 mph, backwards is a bit slower.  Falls are painful and the water is not forgiving!

 Mommy is doing a deepwater barefoot start.  Basically, she holds her breath, planes out, plants her feet carefully and prays...

 This is another way to barefoot... Mommy wanted to show Kyra how to barefoot by dropping off the ski.  Kyra then showed us what 12 years old can do... learn fast and be brave! Her face when she did it for the first time was priceless!

Our lake adventures are never complete without a daily pit-stop at our favorite lake pub for ice cream, peanuts, quarter machine (gambling...nice), and margaritas.

 Fresh air knocked us out at night.  Cooper almost always crashed on our pontoon ride back to Grammy's.

We went to a ski show (twice actually) to cheer on Uncle Matt.  The ski show site is within a mile of Grammy's, so I will not admit to it exactly, but the above photo explains itself.  Matt skis for the waterski team in town and he can do all sorts of crazy tricks.  Here he is doing a flip off the ski jump.

 The weather all weekend was perfect and the sunsets were breath taking.

Cooper fell asleep at the dinner table one night.  He soon rallied for some fishing....

Catch of the Day!

My Mom caught me behind the fish house baiting my own hook with a worm.

On the 4th, we had a quick lunch (our cousin Jimmy, Uncle Karri and Uncle Jim joined us for the 4th/5th). We then made it to the town's parade.  The opening ceremony of the parade never fails to amaze... vintage war planes do a special aerial introduction.

 The parade is the LONGEST parade EVER.  We made it 45 minutes (as usual);  we had enough sugar from candy and freezies to last us the rest of the summer!

 Here is a glimpse of our 4th of July shirts we made.  Bennett, Kyra and Emmett also had them on.  We made them with spiky balls dipped into acrylic paint.  We used glow paint for white, which is hard to see in the bright daylight.

The whole crew scrounging for candy in the street....

 After the parade, it was time for some 4th of July boating and swimming!

 The boys (Kyra was out tubing... sorry Kyra!)

 We had enough sparklers and pop-its (snaps) for several 4th of July celebrations!  

Our new thing to do with Sparklers is to run with them all around the yard.  This raises the blood pressure of all parents nearby.

 We thought the old school army tank fireworks were cool.

Uncle Ben likes to pick up "BIG" fireworks on his drive over from the cities.  Needless to say, I am a little sensitive to the booms.

Ah, our parents took a selfie before the fireworks display over the lake.  We always feel so lucky to be able to watch the show right from Grammy's backyard.

 The fireworks were great this year!  We always love to see the city of lights from the glow of the boats out on the lake.

The next day, it was time to say "goodbye" to some of our family... We loved our 4th of July weekend.  We hope you had a great holiday weekend celebrating too.  How blessed are we to be Americans!  ** Side note.... we added our family photo shoot in a slideshow yesterday to the blog, so scroll down to the next post to catch of glimpse of these.