4th of July

For the 4th of July this year, we hosted the Howell family barbecue. We all ate our fill of hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, fruit pizzas, chips, individual sized chocolate mint pies, and cookies. Then we let the kids swim. The three two year olds stayed here and swam in our backyard.





Scott, Jo, and Jamie took the older 7 kids to the Cove Colony pool and let them swim there.








Scott discovered an "action" function on our camera. It lets you take multiple pictures right in a row. It's great for capturing kids jumping in the pool, but the picture quality isn't the best. It also made for a whole bunch of pictures to sort through at the end of the day (488 pictures in total--that's what happens when you take 30 pictures in 10 seconds of the exact same pose).



After swimming, everyone went home. The kids played outside waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks.














We carried on with our tradition of having our neighbors, the Masons, come do fireworks with us. Before dark, we let the kids do poppers and snakes. (Owen fell asleep before all of this, and stayed asleep till morning. It was nice to not have to worry about having him out with the mosquitoes during the fireworks.)








Finally it was dark enough for fireworks.










Scott put on a great show of fireworks for us.





Nate was so tired, that he fell asleep during the fireworks.

After the fireworks, the kids were more than happy to crawl into bed and go to sleep (they were worn out). Aaron didn't even make it to his bed. He laid down on the rug in the kitchen and went to sleep. (Notice Nate's black feet in his bed)