Summertime awesomeness!!

So since my last gigantic mega post I am now all inspired to get completely caught up on everything and start fresh back into the world of the blogesphere. (it's a word, look it up)
So if you look at the time stamp on this post you'll notice that we are half way through July. A lot has happened already this summer and I have dropped the ball on documenting it. Egad!! How has this happened?Well I'll tell you. I have been busier doing it than I have been documenting it. It happens. So here's what we have done thus far.

The first official week of summer we hitched up the trailer and went camping with 2 other families. Between all of us we had 13 kids total. They had a blast running a muck over here and there. We even had one of the other kids break their arm. Because it's just not a family get away without a major injury.
We had fun though. hanging around the fire, playing volleyball and making smores.

Here are some of the highlights.....Sunshine is decidedly the checker champion of our family. I let her win the first game and then she whipped us all on her own the rest of the weekend. She was pretty tickled with herself.
This is where I spent the better part of my weekend. Our cut throat volleyball game.Then here are some cool pictures Jason got with his phone using hipsomatic. It just puts cool filters on it and makes it look all vintage.We have our cute little vintage trailer.
Then there was the making of the smores.

All in all we had a great time.

Next was the 4th of July.

This year we did it a little different. My mother in law got us all tickets to see the Broadway production of the Lion King that was in town and they happened to fall on the night of the 4th of July.
I have only one word for this production.
AMAZING!!!!

It was an awesome combination of puppetry and stage production. The kids , especially Peanut was mesmerized for 3 hours straight. It was an awesome gift from my mother in law. I have such a deep love for all things Broadway related and it was fun to be able to watch it through my kids eyes and see them get excited for the same reason that I love it.After the performance got out, it was about 9 at night so almost time for fireworks downtown. There was a ton of people pushing their way into the perfect viewing spot. We had parked on the other side of the river to avoid the parking nightmare that was surely to follow on 4th of July downtown. So we made our way across the bridge through the masses with 3 kids in tow. We were able to get out of the crowds a little and find a decent spot to watch them. We were even close enough that we could see the barge that they were shooting them off of in the river. So that was cool. They were going off literally right over head. In fact we were showered with paper and debris from the mortar shells.
Then these next pictures I realize are not the best of quality, but they crack me up and speak a thousand words.
The kids lit off some of their fireworks and were all tickles as they were smoking. Then realized they were probably standing too close and should get out of there and fast. It just sort of cracked me up to see these pictures in sequence.Then last but not least.......Bug at the ripe old age of 9, finally, FINALLY, lost his front tooth. Almost all of his friends have not only lost their teeth, but have a full set of adult teeth. He got his late as a baby, so in turn lost them late too. His dentist was not too concerned. It it rare to do it this late, but it does happen. it doesn't help that he is sort of skeeved out at the thought of pulling out his own teeth so he was not exactly in there moving things along by making them loose. So they literally just need to fall out of his head on their own accord. The prospect of money doesn't even motivate him. He just sort of marches to his own little drummer and you just can't make him do something he isn't ok with. Whatever. We're one step closer now. If only we could work on getting the other one out at the same time so it doesn't look so goofy :)At the rate he's going, he's going to be shaving when his adult teeth come in.

4th of July weekend

Last weekend was 4th of July and my Mom and I decided to nab Sunshine and have us a girls weekend getaway. We had been reading about some really cool events going on up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. So we felt we needed to investigate. You see my mom and I are newly obsessed with this magazine called "MaryJanes farm". Check her out here. She is awesome beyond all belief. She teaches us how to make most everything from scratch, grow our own everything and do it all in a nifty apron. She is based out of Moscow, Idaho but was opening her second store in Coeur d"Alene. She was having a big grand opening and would be there to sign copies of her newest book. Naturally like obsessed groupies we had to find a way to get there.

My mom has a cute little travel trailer that we all would fit comfortably in, so we loaded up the cooler with what we had on hand and away we went. We stayed the first night in Umatilla up the Gorge and the other 2 nights we stayed in Spokane, Wa.

We had a great time camping and just goofing around. We got to meet MaryJane and had a wonderful time in Coeur d'Alene. We enjoyed the 4th of July parade and festivities on the lake all day. We swam and played in the park , and the fireworks over the lake were incredible.

It was a lot of fun with my mom and daughter just hanging out being silly girls. Something we don't get to do often enough but I think we need to make this an annual thing for the 4th of July.

Happy 4th of July!!

What is the best part of summertime?

Well 4th of July of course!!

We are still sort of recovering from our vacation hangover, but luckily my friend Erin was having a giant 4th of July BBQ, so all we had to do was show up and enjoy the festivities. We didn't have to spend a fortune on fireworks, everyone else brought theirs, so we just sat around and enjoyed the pyrotechnic display. There were (what seemed like) thousands of kids running around playing so my kids had a blast getting sticky and dirty with all the others.

We brought our own tofu dogs to grill and loaded up on all of the classic picnic junk food that is required of the holiday.

Rockstar husband came home early and stayed home with Peanut who was having a hard time pushing his bedtime back. But Bug, Sunshine and I stayed for the fireworks. For being up until a little past 11, they did surprisingly well.

We really had a great time.

** As a side note, I would like to point out Bug's super patriotic picture with the flag. Being the perfectionist that he is, he was bummed that I wouldn't photo shop an bald eagle flying over him to get the perfect effect. He cracks me up :)