Hot, Humid...Beach Day!

Today the kids and I went to the beach by our house. It was a perfect day, the water was so nice.

Blake is completely tuckered out after practicing his swimming all afternoon in the lake.

Jalyssa floated around on a raft most of the time. Although she and Blake did gang up on me to splash a ton of water at me.

But never underestimate the mom! My splashes were bigger than both of theirs combined! HA-HA!

Even with my new busy schedule I'm still hoping to go several more times this summer.

I was never that fond of beaches, mostly the sand, but I have such a great time with the kids, it's worth it, sand and all!

Hope everyone is staying cool!

Happy 4th of July!!!

I can't sleep so I decided I'd update today's events.

We started our day going to the Parade in our town at 11 a.m.

Blake made a homemade flag earlier in the week and wanted to bring it to wave.

The parade lasted an hour and was great. Lots of new floats to see and Blake collected plenty of candy. Brian got a free tee shirt and I got a free flag and pole to mount to the house.

Afterwards we went to eat lunch at Wendy's, we do this every year. 

Then we went to the Middle School and checked out the games and activities. We've never gone to it before usually because we had to get home to go to another event or something.

Blake played on 3 different inflatables and even got up the courage to climb a rock wall.

He made it a little more than half way up. His hands hurt and he was shaking. But he did such a great job and loved it.

Then we came home and rested for the afternoon. Around 9:30 we headed to a friend of ours home and sat in their yard until dark. While waiting Blake and Brian played with some sparklers. There's some fun photos of that.

Then FINALLY (as Blake would say) the big fireworks began. 

I am posting a few that I took, for anyone who would like to see all of them, email me and I email the rest to you. 

Hope everyone had a great 4th. 

Hail....to July!

On Wednesday during a big storm along with many other neighboring cities, we had hail. It was from pea-sized to marble sized. 

It was Blake's first time seeing hail and he thought it was pretty cool. I think he was a bit confused as to why it was "snowing" in July.