4th of July, Sidewalk of Fire, Skittle Bites, Faucet Locks

The kids love to feed the cows behind our house.  They have fed them so many times that whenever anyone walks outside in the backyard all the cows come over to the fence and stare at us waiting for some food.  One cow even licked Daniel's hand and afterward Daniel was done feeding them because he thought it was so gross to have cow slime on his hand.

Oh what am I going to do with Noah?!  He is such a stinker!  Yesterday morning I was woken up at 4 am by the sound of water running.  I got up out of bed to see what was going on.  The faucets in the house were all off so I wandered outside to see if it was coming from there and it was.  The stinkerpants left the backyard hose turned on and running on the patio.  Luckily it wasn't on full blast, but it was still on and had been running from at least 7 pm the night before.  I turned it off and then went downstairs in the basement to see if it had flooded.  Thankfully it hadn't, but that was a very close call.  The next morning Aaron asked me why I was wandering around at 4 am so I told him.  He went and ordered some faucet locks right after.  They look like this:

We are hoping that it will stop Noah from turning the hose on and leaving it on.  We have had way too many close calls to flooding the basement so hopefully these will help!!  Good thing I love that boy!! I am glad he likes to help me water the plants, but he sneaks outside and will turn the water on without me or Aaron knowing and then leave it on.  

For Family Home Evening we decided to go for a family bike ride to the park by our house which is only about a mile away.  It was pretty fun and there were no major mishaps which make it that much better.  On the way home Daniel and I had a race which turned out to be a tie, however, afterward I had some pretty wobbly legs.  Let's just say I am a tad out of shape.

 Wednesdays we have a playgroup we go to at the park with a bunch of friends.  It is a nice time for some moms to get some adult conversation while the kids can play together.  It is a lot of fun, however, it is out in the sun so my kids usually come home with a tan while I come back home with a nice sunburn--DOH!!  We also have been working on some sweet flip flop lines on our feet, too.  Here's Noah's, mine and Josh's feet with our summer flop flop lines.

Have I mentioned that Josh wears the same size shoe I do now a (7 1/2 women's)?  It actually has been convenient because if I can't find my flip flops I can just slip his on and they fit.  Matthew's flop flops, however, are now too big for me.  Let's just hope he's not like a puppy that grows into his feet because if that's the case he is going to be one tall kiddo!!

For the 4th of July we had a fun family day.  We started our day by going to the West Point City's parade that morning with G&G T.  Yes I am a nerdy mom that likes to have a matchy matchy family.

 Here's Sarah's patriotic dress:

 With her patriotic star hairdo:

 Here the kids are watching the flag pass by signalling the beginning of the parade:

 After the parade we came home and had a quick breakfast then we headed out again to attend West Point Day's in the park.  They did a bunch of minute to win it games and Josh had a chance to participate.  He had to stick a plastic spoon in his mouth and try to balance 6 dice on it.  He didn't win that round, but he got an 'A' for effort, though.

Here's Josh getting ready for it to start:

 Afterward Matthew, Josh and Daniel took a turn at the climbing wall and all three made it to the top and rang the bell.  Wahoo!  Here's Daniel at the top:

 Josh:

 Matthew:

 While the three oldest boys were climbing Sarah and Noah took a turn on the bounce house:

 Then all five kids did the obstacle course:

 All five did the fishing pond:

 Then the duck catch:

 After all that we sat down and did a few rounds of BINGO.

Josh won a boxed Frisbee golf set from playing BINGO:

After a few rounds of BINGO we were done being baked in the sun so we decided to leave.  Matthew had found a few girls from our ward to sit with at a picnic table and was not too happy about leaving without winning a round of BINGO.  The girls he sat with were kind enough to offer to play his BINGO card for him after he left and would bring over any prizes he won if he did win any.  I wasn't expecting anything so I was really surprised to see them on our front porch when we got home after getting snow cones.  They had played Matthew's card for him and he had won two cases of Capri suns.  Oh he was so excited.  I was really grateful those girls were kind enough to do that for him, too.

As I said we stopped by to get some snow cones by a shack in front of the local grocery store.  Oh these snow cones were so yummy!   We ordered them with a big scoop of ice cream in the middle drizzled with sweetened condensed milk on the top.   YUMMY and perfect for a very hot day!

G&G T also really liked them.  It was nice because all the kids wanted to sit by them so Aaron and I had a few quiet minutes alone at the table next to them.

 Josh and Matthew did sit with us for a few minutes, but not for long.

 When we got home to cool off in the air conditioned house the whole very hot, sticky, candy sugary morning caught up to Sarah and she ended up turning into Mount Vesuvius and throwing up all over her blanket, pillow pet, couch and clothes.  Good thing it was all the sticky purple snow cone she had just eaten 30 minutes before....Bleh!  Anyway, after showering her and washing all her clothes, blanket, pillow, etc. she was good as new, almost--poor thing!

For dinner we had a BBQ in the backyard.  Grandpa T made everyone home made some yummy root beer just like he's done ever since I can remember.  It is so yummy.  The kids all were his helpers whether he wanted help or not....They had a  lot of fun playing in the 'smoke' after he put in the dry ice.  Sarah's shirt wasn't dry yet from getting barfed on and washed, but she wouldn't go outside without her patriotic dress on so that's why she doesn't have a shirt on--silly girl!  I remember always playing in the root beer smoke, too, when I was little.

 While the food was cooking Aaron made a bottle rocket contraption.  You use a 2 liter soda bottle with a bit of water in it then hook it up to this contraption.  Then you pump air into the water bottle with a bicycle tire pump until it blasts off into the air.  All the kids had their own 2 liter bottle so everyone got a turn.

Josh's bottle went the highest:

 Noah was more excited to play with the water hose which was no surprise.  He thought it was hilarious to go around squirting everyone and making the kids scream.  Aaron grabbed the hose and squirt Noah back and he did NOT like that.  Oh he was so upset after that.  He does not like having a wet shirt at all.  He immediately took his shirt off and laid down on the hot cement to warm up.  I guess he got a good dose of Karma because what went around came back around and got him back--haha.

 After eating dinner we had some chill out time while waiting for it to get dark enough to do fireworks.  Sarah and Noah chose to watch a movie together.  This is proof that they do love each other even if they tease each other a lot, right?!

 Josh and Daniel caught me in a weak moment at the grocery store and talked me into buying some fireworks.  They can be smooth talkers sometimes and very persuasive which worked out in their favor.  So we decided to hold our own sidewalk of fire.  Of course, grocery store fireworks aren't very spectacular, but they were still fun to watch with G&G T.

 When it got really dark we roasted smores and waited for the fireworks to start.  From our backyard we can clearly see West Point City's firework show as well as Clearfield City's firework show.

 Here's the view from our backyard:

 Pretty good view from the comfort of our own home especially in front of the fire pit roasting smarshmallows as Noah calls them!

It was a fun day, but everyone was ready for bed after the fireworks shows were over including Aaron and me and G&G T!!

The next morning there was some root beer left over in the cooler, but my kids made short work of it.  Yes my kids all had home made root beer for breakfast the next day.  Noah even tried scooping out the root beer slush to finish off his breakfast.  Good thing we are so health conscious here--haha!

 The next night our friends invited us over for dinner and to watch their fireworks.  Blaine LOVES fireworks and buys a ton.  He collected all the coupons from friends, neighbors and family to build up his fireworks arsenal just for that night.  Quite a few people came to watch and it was pretty impressive.

It was about 20 minutes of fireworks like this:

 It was awesome!  However, after spending two nights in a row outside all of us had gotten a few mosquito bites or Noah keeps calling them Skittle Bites.  He kept talking about all his Skittle bites the next day at church and no one could get what he was talking about until he would point to them on his legs.  It was pretty cute.

It was lady's night about two weeks ago.  A bunch of ladies met at Red Robin for dinner and for some adult conversation without kids.  It was really fun.  We were there for about an hour and a half before we moved the party over to Cold Stone for some ice cream.  It was nice to get out of the house and have a break along with adult conversation for a night.  I was glad Aaron stayed with the kids so I could go.