4th of July 2017

After returning home from our two week southwest sabbatical trip, we laid pretty low. We slept in, watched The Price Is Right every single morning with coffee, the kids played Legos, Terry worked on the New Yorker, and I can't even remember anything that I did. The next time I took photos was for the 4th of July. Actually, on the third of July we went out to the ranch since Alice was off work that day. Shari had bought several packages of quick fill water balloons. 

All the kids watching Terry will them up. 

Looking back at Grampa for some forgotten reason.  

Aaaaaaand begin! 

The balloons flew, but very few broke on an actual body, but bounced off and splashed on the ground. 

Evie missed Samuel. Ha ha ha. 

 Samuel trying to get Evie back.

Evie popped that pink one on her own head, the silly girl. 

The water balloon fight was over all too soon so the kids got a little more wet in the sprinkler.  

Jerry and Alice have their own well and due to the drought had been leaving the sprinkler on for extended periods of time for protection in case a fire.  

It was very hot, but the shade felt nice. Noah is too old to have fun anymore apparently...

Evie and Grace came over to say hello. 

All the cousins minus Noah and Rebekah. 

Sarah made a woodwind instrument out of the leftover water balloon tubes.

Oreo snack time in the shade, Grampa is always up for a wet Grace. 

He had just been licking that Oreo to be silly. I'll spare him the embarrassment of posting that picture. Ha! 

Grace and Sarah and an apparently tired Grampa. 

Ezra. He is always doing this face. I'm his mother and I don't even really understand it yet. It's like he likes the attention and at the same time doesn't want it. So he smirks. Then he'll hide his face and yell at you incomprehensibly something that's supposed to mean, "Stop looking at me!"

After getting dressed we went for a roller coaster ride. Samuel would only go if I rode with him, also  instructing Grampa he only wanted six rides. He had more than that.  

Wahoo! 

I like this one that Terry took of Noah.  

Noah in front, Shari and Sarah in back. 

Noah and Grace, me and Shari. 

Shari and I started getting silly... 

...this little roller coaster can be so scary after all... 

...and so fast it blew my hair out! 

The next day we did pretty much nothing until that evening when we drove to our first fireworks show at Arrowhead golf course.

We got there at 9:15pm and waited for about an hour before the show started! It took so long! We were parked across from the golf course on Sheridan Lake Road, directly to the SW of those big pink apartments, in the parking lot of the old funeral home with the waterfall. Other people were shooting off fireworks like this one and that kept us a little entertained. You can see the moon through the explosion to the right which I thought was cool.

Finally at 10:15pm the show started and we quickly realized we had picked a poor location. The tree across the street was blocking our view for the lower fireworks. 

These were the kids' favorites. 

I like best the "weeping willow" ones that fall slowly down... 

Red zingy ones and all too quickly, the show was done. We didn't get home until like 10:45pm, and once we did, the driver's side sliding door wouldn't close...!