Celebrating the 4th

We celebrated a fantastic Independence Day this year!

I wish we could have been with all of our family, but it just didn't work out this year.

My mom and dad were able to come up and visit and we had a great time!

We grilled burgers and hotdogs and had pasta salad, potato salad, deviled eggs, baked beans and homemade lemonade! Yummo!

My dad brought me some tomatoes from his garden!!!

B Boy was so proud that he fixed his own burger up!

Tim is the master griller! Looking good!

We had watermelon for dessert!

The funnest part of the afternoon was B Boy starting a water gun fight with Grandma and Pop Pop!!!

My mom had a blast!

I think dad had fun too!

 C Girl tried to stay out of the fight!!

I read an article about how to take photos of fireworks, so I decided to practice last night.

I think they turned out pretty decent!

Our town has an AMAZING fireworks show.

When I say amazing, I mean that it is the 3rd best show I've ever been to.

It ranks under Disney World and when we watched fireworks under the St. Louis Arch in 2010.

The park where it is at was insanely crowded.  We ended up being outside of the park back on some soccer fields.

We could still hear the music from the concerts and the view was PERFECT.

Some of the fireworks literally feel like they are coming at you.  They were HUGE.

Ok, I'll quit bragging now.

It was just so impressive!

Fun with Family Part 2

I have to start with a funny story.

We went to Coldstone Creamery tonight after dinner.

We were all eating our ice cream on the patio there, and B Boy had finished his and was running around.

He ran by Jessica and asked her, "have you ever seen diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid?"

We all kind of laughed thinking that we had heard him wrong.

She asked him to repeat it and he said the same thing again.

We then asked him if he thought it was "Diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid" and he said yes!

Oh my gosh, we were about to fall out of our chairs!!!

We told him the real title and he said, "ohhhh." It was hilarious!

We loaded up and drove to Gentry to the Wild Wilderness Safari this morning.

It is the absolute coolest place.

The drive thru part is 4 miles and has so many animals to see.

It was also Jessica and Parker's first time.

 We always get visitors right up at the windows!

There are just so many animals and I could show so many pictures, but I just picked a few highlights.

We went and did the "zoo" part after the driving part.

They have areas that you can go into and pet animals and there are other animals that you can view in cages or fenced areas.

 I love seeing animals and their babies!!! There were a lot of babies to see this time.

 They have peacocks that roam around all over the park.  They are breathtaking.

We ate at Gentry's local pizza place, Pioneer Pizza, for lunch.  It was very good and the prices were great too!  We even saw a friend from church while we were there!

We let the kids play outside in the yard together this afternoon.  We love to watch C Girl and B Boy playing with Parker. It's the greatest!

It was a great, fun day full of memories!

Fishing, creeking, & camping

We are so glad to finally have Daddy home for vacation!

Our first item on the agenda was to go fishing.

Tim absolutely loves to fish.

He's still trying to teach the kids!

They really do enjoy it though!

We went to Lake Atalanta in Rogers.  

We saw catfish, bass and blue gill and caught some blue gill.

We saw geese, ducks, scissor-tail flycatchers and other random birds too.

It was very peaceful early in the morning.

(side note- C has finally learned to put her own hair in a pony tail really good!  Yay!)

We fished for 3 1/2 hours!

We were starving so we headed downtown and ate at Lucy's Diner.

It was SO GOOD.

Tim had hamburger steak and I had breakfast (pancakes, eggs & bacon).

I love good old fashioned cooking!

There is a playground and a nice creek at Lake Atalanta.

We headed back to let the kids play in the creek for awhile.

They had a blast exploring and splashing!

We came home and all took naps.

And we decided to camp in the backyard!

And have a fire with roasted marshmallows and s'mores!

RIP chocolate Easter bunny.

The kids had so much fun.

I love watching them make memories!

 Our air mattress lost half of it's air during the night and the birds are SUPER loud first thing in the morning, but Tim made pancakes with fresh strawberries on top and coffee!