The 4th Of July!

We celebrated the American way :-) We went all out - minus Dad and the fireworks. It was Dad's turn to work the holidays at the hospital. As for the fireworks, I had planned on taking the kids. I even told them so a week ago, but then we were invited to share the day canoeing and picnicking and all that fun stuff and by the time we got home, while they were still talking about the fireworks, they were not the least unwilling to go to sleep. Usually there are some fireworks in our valley and we usually watch from the porch so I told the kids they could wake up to see them... They went to bed promising to wake us up!! LOL. I had every intention of waking them up - but either there were none, or every single person in the house slept through them. There's a lot of kidding with the twins this morning about them NOT waking us up and us missing the whole show which I'm seriously certain did not happen.

This first photo is a fluke as I am sure I don't know how to take such a picture.

Pretty, eh?

So peaceful. 

James between Tom and Elaine, Brianna at the head of Anderson's canoe, Missy between Vanessa and I.

As a word of explanation:

*yes, I bought matching T-shirts of the occasion. Couldn't pass up the $5 each and every 3rd shirt free. it makes for better coordinated pictures, I'll have you know!

* My potato salad WAS blue because the potatoes I grew are blue not because I cooked them in dye or anything as Steve thought.

* James actually can skip rocks. Missy is likely to "knock some sense into you" with her rocks.

* The crazier the better for Missy - calm and peaceful is her brother's style. Yes, Bri was teaching her how to stand up and paddle a canoe - her twin prefers everybody to sit down.

* James is not ashamed to save his head with mom's sweater when he forgets his hat.

* It's a good thing we weren't gathering armloads of them. Apparently it's not okay to pick the water lilies.Or, so we found out.

* I had my resident artist brained photographer along, hence the random pics of hands and shirts.

BUT 

that wasn't the end of our day.
Mr. Tom offered to teach James how to drive his go-cart!

 so very exciting!!

 Watch out Joe, off I go!!

My lands, this takes so much concentration. . . and when you have half second-delayed response to everything it makes for an interesting ride :-P
Lesson learned. Accept a little help from big sister . .

It's still fun.

The face says it all!

Ya'll can see why we didn't need fireworks.

Tomorrow my big girls leave for California
and we're gonna miss them!
It's now a big count down to picking them and Christina up in August.