It's July, holy cow, it is July but we had hail! And big ones to. We were all out sining and playing in the downpour and then all of a sudden pain. Big ol dime side hail. Derek and I start running for cover but Jude and Alice just stay still and cry so we double back snag them and rush to shelter. Those suckers stung! We finished out the rain storm from the saftey of our car port and just watched the wonder of it.

Here is a video of me trying to put Alice's hair into a pony tail. She is not going to have any of it.  

I printed off a bunch of pictures, put them on magnetic sheets, cut them out, and stuck them on the fridge.  Jude looked at each picture and was done. Alice loved them!  She would move them around, and get so excited about who she was looking at, or what was going on in the picture.  After awhile she started expirementing by putting the pictures in different places.  Finding out that the wall wasn't magnetic was a bummer for her but when she found out the dishwasher would hold up the picures it was on! She was running them back and forth, sorting them, and just laughing. Occasionly she would run over and show me a person and was just so excited. I think I am going to have to expand my fridge family photo albulm.

I thought I had the perfect activity for the kiddos. Making froot loop necklaces! Well... Jude was interested for about 5 seconds and Alice for even less. They were much more interested in eating them. After they each got a couple of hand fulls in there mouth I figured we could try to do necklaces again. Much better this time. They loved their necklaces but the second I put them on their neck they chomped away. I was lucky to  get a picture. I guess next time I need to pick a less delicious craft project.

I love the lake. I adore the Lake. I wish I could be at the lake everyday! We have so much fun when we go and we don't go enough. My mom came along this time and the kids were in high heaven. She had a little foaty and the kids thought it was a boat. They had such a ball going all around in it.  The water is realy low this year and you could get way into it and still stand.  And I finally got to use my tent! It was so nice when it came time to take a break. We all sat in the shade and with plenty of room to. We ate our sandwiches, drank our water, and didn't get melted by the sun. I love the lake!

So my dear sister Andrea calls and basically says "Would you like me to provide your kids with an activity? Where I will pay for supplies, drive it to your doorstep, and also provide man power and all you have to do is attend and bring your cabin fever kids?" YES!!!! I love that suggestion! And it was a dousy of an activity. She brought a big tarp and duct tape. We taped up the edges and then filled it up with waer and ade a GIANT BLOB!!! It was so much fun!  It was basically a giant outside water bed. The kids were having such a fun time squishing and squashing. They were jumping and rolling all over and just having the best time! What an awesome Aunt!!! 

We had an especially great 4th of july this year. We didn't really get started till dinner time where I made red white and blue pancakes! Very patriotic and very tasty. Then we went over to Brian and Angie's for rootbeer floats. (coke floats for me thanks) The kids were looking very cute in their firework shirts (we made firework prints using pipecleaners and different color paints) Then we went over to the High School parking lot and just wandered. There were stairs, ramps, fences, ledges, trees, so basically a playground for our kids. They had a real treat climbing and playing on everything.  When it got dark we lit off a couple of our smaller fireworks and did our traditional dance aroud the firework bit.

 BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!! Time for the big fireworks. We had a couple of big ones that we had bought. It was fun to see big fireworks going off right above our heads. Then we watched the town fireworks and it was quite a wonderful way to celebrate our country's independence.