It's Independence Day

We have a pretty solid tradition of meeting up with our neighbors for our city's festivities on the evening of the 4th of July.  There's an awesome parade, a concert, and a big fireworks display.

This leaves our morning/afternoon open, however.  So we loaded up the kids and met West's cousin, Robert, at Rockport for some boating.

The weather was nice except the wind picked up and didn't settle down.  That made for some choppy water, however that didn't stop some brave souls from showing off their developing skills.

It's always nice to soak up some sun and cheer each other on.














Cas brought her boyfriend, Brycen, and helped herself to some selfie time...

Love that girl.  I want big things for her.

For all of them.

We got home in time to clean up and meet our neighbor friends for the parade.  You have to get there right when the helicopter leaves so you can grab your preferred spot.

Which means curb sitting for two hours.

So we played cards, spike ball, and wandered the booths and food trucks until the parade started.

After the parade we all head to Chic-fil-a for dinner.

Then we create all sorts of antics while the concert plays cover songs and we wait for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin.

I love summer. 

I love my family.

I love being part of such a fun community.

I love being an American.

Traditions are good.

Over the Weekend We... Night Drive, BBQ, and Games

Over the Weekend The Man and I ate sushi at our favorite little sushi spot.

And then we took a really long night drive together with a lot of junk food and relieved some stress.

On Saturday we painted our shed (pictures to come) and had a bbq with good neighbor friends where we committed to a Lake Powell trip in September, so that will be fun.

The food was good, the conversation sassy and fun, and the kids ran wild.  The weather was perfect and the s'mores were a perfect ending.

The Man did an incredible job hanging our yard lights.  I'm so in love with him.  And them.

And on Sunday we made of the girls for phone usage.

And promptly made them put the phones down and play some games with us.

Sundays are a good game day.

It's the little things that build our family and lives.

Summer is the Front Yard

Summer time and the living is easy.

Brynn, Milo the Corgi, Tayler, Simone, Evynn

For whatever the reason, our summers are lived out in our front yard, and not the backyard.  Though I'm working to change that, at least in just some small part, with some "face lift ideas" for the backyard.  It's a great yard.

But we do enjoy the front yard.  I think the draw is the neighbors walking by.  Or yelling "hey" at The Russians over the half fence.  Commenting on The Cooks' grass (I think we finally have them beat this year!), or the Russell's flowers.  And all the small children getting a thrill with Milo the Corgi.

Simone, Brynn, Tayler, Cali, Milo the Corgi, Evynn

I think it's all of these reasons that we live our summers out in the front of our house.

And last night was no different.

Milo the Corgi

I changed my email/google account, and in so doing have seemed to have lost all of my pictures from my previous blog.

All of them.

Years of picture memories, all of my children's childhood pictures... just gone.

I'm so sad.

I can't even begin to comprehend this.

Not much I can do except strap on my big girl boots and carry on.  I still have a lot to catch up (thank goodness I got behind, it's all safe in my email archives), but a lesson learned to start printing the blog on a yearly basis so we will always have a hard copy of our pictures.

And in an effort to not be bogged down by the mess that was once all of our memories, I'm starting a new.

So to carry on.

Here's a cute puppy picture of Milo.

In fact, this can be a post about that Milo boy.

He's a pretty timid dog.  He doesn't like the vacuum, or anything that makes noise, really.  He'll slip out that dog door and sit on the back deck as soon as he gets any inclination that something uncomfortable (like vacuuming, or The Man with an empty wrapping paper roll) is about to go down.  He has a bit of a hip problem that really becomes aggravated when he's too fat, which is often, so The Man built a ramp on top of the deck stairs so he can get up and down.  We try and take care of him so he doesn't get overweight, but the boy likes to eat.

I can relate.

Milo prefers the next door neighbors to us.

They feed him.  Left over meat pieces and rib bones and such.  Our neighbor is a chef.

Milo thinks he's king of the world.

We call our neighbors "The Russians" because they're from Russia and their last name has too many consonants and not enough vowels for me to be able to remember it.

Milo is a sweetheart, even if he's a traitor.  He's picked up some phrases in Russian, but most particularly, he's picked up on the word "treat" in Russian.  Don't ask me what it is, The Russians don't offer me treats in Russian, just Milo.  He'll sit in the front yard at the fence line and wait for The Russians to come outside.  As soon as he sees them, all loyalty for us is out the window.

That's fine, Milo.

We see how you are.