Our wonderful weekend!

The End of the day!

Amelia went in the house to go potty after all the fireworks and when I went in to go I found her like this! I had a hard time not wetting my pants laughing because it was so funny! I had to show Amber too! (She is the other person taking pictures and laughing!) Poor little girl had, had too much fun for one weekend! If you listen carefully you can hear her snore! Good thing the only thing we did on Saturday was a little house work and a Costco run! (Which wears me out but she took a nap when we were all done!)
***Sorry this whole Entry is done kind of backwards when you read it but for some reason I can no longer move my pictures on my blog. They go on in the order I down load them. I should have started backwards but it is to late now! It took way to long for me to want to start over! So either read from the bottom to the top or enjoy looking at things backward!!Amelia, doing her sparkler!

Brock!

Eli and Brock having so much fun together!

Ethan with a little bit of a Statue of Liberty pose!

Eve!

Kelli and Issac.

We don't know Issac as well but it is so fun to get to know him more each time we get together. He reminds me a lot of the other two Gard kids so he fits right in! We love him already!

Lucia looked so cute doing her Sparkler!

The BBQ!Some of the kids playing!!!

The adults visiting! (Sorry Amber about the Sneeze picture!)

More of the group!

Hayden with her "dinner" a chocolate cookie!!! Yum!

Every year we have a BBQ with some of our friends after the parade. It is always a lot of fun! The kids run wild (maybe get wet) and the grown ups get to sit and visit, and catch up. This is always a treat for me but this year I had a bit of an extra treat! One of my dearest friends Kelli and her kids were able to be there! We missed Lance but it was so nice have some catch up time, see her prego tummy, and visit with her kids who I totally love!!! Brock loved getting to play with Eli again! He missed Eli a lot. Anyway It was a success and we were so glad we had so many people out. Larry and I counted heads at the end of the day and were pretty happy that we had almost 40 people in our yard Saturday! (39 to be exact!) Way fun! We talked some of them into staying long enough for fireworks. I know some people had to go earlier but we were glad to have some company for fireworks!

Next Stop!Monmouth always has a Children's parade before the big Parade. My kids love to participate in this! We always put a few ribbons on their bikes, maybe some flags... anything to make it look festive! We even put a fun bandanna on the dog! I can't resist I just love the 4th of July!

Off we go!

Here we are all lined up to watch the parade! We ended up being joined by some of our friends the Jackson's which made the parade that much more fun! I just love hanging out with people who bring out the rowdy me that I don't see much. There was lots of candy almost to rival Halloween! YUM! (Larry found Brock and Eli hiding eating it later in the day. Not that we wouldn't let him eat it he was just being sneaky!)

Bright and Early!Every year our Ward has a flag raising! There is patriotic songs, prayer, a speaker, and cinnamon roles. Since we were out LATE Friday night it seemed to be ever earlier this year!

Here is our wonderful flag! I couldn't help but include it!

And here is the wonderful cinnamon roles! I think this is the other reason the morning came to soon for me. I had mixed up the dough for mine the night before (about 1 am actually) then I got up at 5:30 to roll them out, and put them in the oven. It was worth it to have warm fresh ones though!

Thursday Night!This is me tickling Brock and taking a picture at the same time (hence the blur! But I loved it anyway)

Hayden was just so cute I couldn't help it!

This is Ethan Busting a move on the dance floor!

More of Ethan and Amelia dancing!

Friday night Larry and I thought how fun it would be to take the kids down to River front park in Independence to watch the fire works (they usually do it for 3 days around the 4th and we thought Friday would be included!) But we got there and there was a military band playing and they played some really fun rock, country mix music and my kids just went crazy dancing. I have to say I wasn't sure if Ethan was doing some interpretive dancing or if he was trying to break dance some of the time. I just had to laugh half the time. (Not at him with him!) He knew we were all having fun. At the end Amelia, Brock and I were dancing together and they wanted me to lift them up and twirl them the whole time ( my back was tired by the end of that!) But it felt good to dance and have fun. After the music they played Spiderman 3 on a big screen. We hadn't seen it yet and thought we might have to leave with our kids since we don't let them watch things like that normally. It turned out ok. Ethan was the only one who stayed awake the others were all zonked. It really was a lot of fun. Oh and on top of it we had really yummy snacks to take with us because earlier in the day I had taken the kids to the Swimming pool and we had ridden our bikes (this is about a 2 mile ride one way.) Anyway on our way out of the pool to ride home a police man on a bike came and talked to us and saw that all my kids had helmets and were wearing them and gave them a free ticket for a BLIZZARD! Not a small cone a blizzard from Dairy Queen! (This is on of my most favorite treats!) Since we didn't have to pay for the kids to get ice cream we all got a blizzard and took them with us! It was the perfect ending to a busy week! Although we were out till after midnight and had to be up early for our 4th of July festivities!