4th of July week

The week started out being ridiculously hot and ended out perfectly perfect weather wise.  How do I define “ridiculously hot”?  When a tree squirrel climbs down in my front yard and digs a shallow hole in the shady lawn to cool his belly in the fresh dug dirt.  Poor little guy!  He lay there for hours.

One evening M put out some sprinklers to refresh our poor, hot yard.  The kids grabbed their umbrellas and raincoats and ran through the sprinklers in their pjs!  Who’s in charge of this circus any way???  Another evening when I was out doing some errands, M and the kids had an all out water war… again, in their pjs!?!?!

Because of the heat and dry conditions all fireworks were banned this year.  Boo!  Knowing that the day wasn’t going to end in rib rattling explosions of sparkly lights, sort of put a damper on the whole day.  We hung our flag on the house.  AJ thought that was the best thing we’d ever done.  M made a superb dutch oven ribs and we had homemade root beer for floats.  AJ calls it “yute beer”.  tee hee hee!  I made a few plates of patriotic strawberries and we took them to a few friends just for fun.  We ended the day by reading our scriptures outside on the deck, (Alma 10 of course, because it refers to a fabulous event that happened on the "4th day of the 7th month" go check it out.) and then letting the kids run around with glow sticks instead of sparklers.

Thursday we finally got rain; a great big whopping thunderstorm.  It’s so nice to be down in the 80s again.

Friday morning was the last meeting of the summer running club for elementary aged kids put on by the high school cross country coach and team.  S ran a full mile in just over 10 minutes!  Way to go S!!!

Friday night we went to the new Outdoor Campus for our State Fish & Game Department.  It’s a really beautiful facility with nice displays inside and walking trails and boardwalks outside.  

All summer they offer loads of free programs for all ages.  This week’s theme was archery and they had bows and instructors for ages 8 & up.  S wasn’t quite strong enough to pull the strings back, but M was right there to help her.  It was a proud moment for M. 

We ended the week with a fun summer party at our church. There was a hamburger dinner with a contest for the best dessert; my dessert won 3rd place.

. . . a bicycle parade; S and AJ decorated their helmets and bike and trike respectively and were in the bicycle parade. AJ went round and round and round, long after everyone else quit.

. . . 3 bouncy house/slides, No kid can resist a bouncy house, . . . a dozen really fun carnival games,

. . . a photo booth with paper mustaches,

. . . a watermelon eating contest; S enjoyed herself immensely in the watermelon eating contest. She was in it for the love of watermelon and not finishing first.

. . . and a family dance! AJ and I were the only ones in the family who danced. Luckily there were no photos taken of that . . . the whole time we were dancing, even the 3 year old AJ was shouting, “Stop it Mom! Stop it!” But fun was had by all!!!