Liberty Park

On Saturday we had a picnic in the park.  Since Dad played a volleyball tournament there a while back he has been wanting to take the family.  We had lots of fun eating outside, rolling down the hill, playing in the streams, swinging and playing on the park.

Dad helping #5 Boy enjoy the stream without getting too wet.

Dad and Kids

Dad pushing kids on the swings

#5 Boy got to hang out with me and eventually went on the park.

The Yard

The Yard takes up a lot of time and energy, but we LOVE having it.  Our garden is growing and we love discovering the different plants that are growing.  (Some times we have to do a bit of weeding to find the poor plants.  I think next year we need to put our plants closer together so weeds have less room to take over!)  Today I picked cilantro and green onions from the garden and used them with our dinner.  I just wished that the tomatoes were red instead of green.

Yummy Cilantro!

Green Onions

 The other day we also noticed a little life growing on the mostly dead baby twisted locust.  We decided to cut down most of the tree and leave the little bit of new growth to grow.  It has been growing well!  We are excited about this little guy.

On the right side is the baby twisted locust

The kids have discovered that there are millions of snails all over our yard.  One of their hobbies is to gather them and stick them on the 'snail rock' out the front door of our house (what a way to be greeted!)

But then they do something cute, like take the dying roses I have just snipped and place one on each window sill in the home...aren't they beautiful (for a day).

A lot of the yard work Dad and I do together is after the kids have 'gone to bed'.  The other night while out working I looked up to see this beautiful sunset!

Sunset!

The (2nd, 3rd and) 4th Of July

It was nice to have a long weekend filled with lots of fun things...because of that I am presenting a long post filled with lots of fun pictures :-)

Working on their shirts.  Dad took the older four to get stuff for shirts while I sewed the pants together.

That night we headed up to Brother's home to celebrate Mom and Dad's 40th Wedding Anniversary.  It was fun to eat dinner, play games, watch a slideshow and do fireworks together.  I only got pictures of the fireworks with everyone lined up down the street.  I will have to snatch someone's pictures of the family and Mom and Dad.

Staying up Late to do fireworks!

On Sunday we all wore red, white and blue to church.  In the morning I snapped some pictures of the kids in their pajamas.

#4 Boy

#2 Boy (He only wanted his favorite color...green)

#3 Girl

#5 Girl.. she did her own fireworks but had Dad help with the flags

#5 Boy- his stars and stripes glow and we added some fireworks to his too

The Crew

The Girls

The boys

That night we went to my Grandma's for the annual 4th of July celebration, parade, sleepover and band.  (My Grandpa started a band when my mom was just a little girl, to wake everyone up on the fourth of July.  Since that time it has grown... it is a wonderful tradition that we all have wonderful memories from).

Great Grandma explaining the tradition to the grandkids

Cousin painting #3 Girl's fingernails. 

Our Family decked out in our pajamas (which I started making because of the pajama parade and have continued to make every year).

#4 Boy even got his toenails done

#3 Girl doing one of the games

#2 Girl doing the game

#5 Boy had fun playing with the balls

Sister loves playing with the little ones

Cousin and #1 Girl racing

Cousin and #1 Girl running

#3 Girl loves sitting on Grandma's lap.

#3 Girl with a glow bracelet the neighbor brought over.

Aunt always wears her red robe to lead the pajama parade

My Mom snapped a couple of pictures of us sleeping...

Yes pull up some lawn to sleep on

#5 Boy in his pack -n- play right next to #1 Girl

Then the kids were up until 11pm and the next morning we got up to listen to the band

The band arrives!

Grandma  and some aunts all lined up playing the clarinet

After that the kids decorated Great Grandma as a float and paraded her down to the church where the band plays some more songs and we eat breakfast all together.

We came home and relaxed for a while.  The kids biked and we visited with our neighbors (the kids love their kids like older siblings).  They shot off an awesome firework that had parachutes and flags that flew out of it.  That evening we went down to my parents for dinner, swimming and the first moments of fireworks.

 swimming

#3 Girl showing me how she can go under. #1 Girl also playing with the yellow water gun

#2 Boy enjoyed jumping off the board

#2 Boy with a sparkler

Showing some of the craziness that we call having a large family (and this was only a few of them)

Great Grandma came over to watch the swimming, enjoy dinner and fireworks.

Kids enjoying the sparklers

 When we got home we joined the neighbors for some awesome fireworks.

One of the the many cool fountains (I didn't get any shots of the aerials but there were lots of those too)

They often had lots of fireworks going at the same time

watching the fireworks

We love having fun neighbors!