Cardboard Castle

Nana sent the kids a huge cardboard Castle and told me to go ahead and give it to them whenever I needed.  Well today was the day.  It rained and poured all afternoon, and we spent three solid hours on our porch listening to the rain and coloring the Castle.  Our neighbor Grace helped out.

Max did not want to stop coloring to pose for a picture!

Ella watched them the entire time from the comfort of her beloved exersaucer.  It was very entertaining.

They love their Castle so much, they wanted to eat dinner in it.  So we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and baby carrots.  Hey, it's Christmas break and they're kids - if it works for them it works for me.  Max begged me to put his bed in the Castle so that he could sleep there.  I really thought we were headed for a tantrum, until he realized how dark it was when we turned off all the lights.  He then finally agreed to go to bed in his room.

Our 4th Celebration

After nice long naps following the parade, we had some friends over for a cook-out and our own little fireworks show. We managed to shoot off about half the fireworks before a rainstorm hit. Nearby "big" fireworks shows were sadly canceled, so we were glad we had our little ones and the kids loved them!




Throwing "poppers"!





This was Max's first experience with fireworks, and he was very brave. Earlier in the day he would only watch our test shoots from inside the house through the window, but in the evening he sat outside with all the kids and seemed to have fun.




Sparklers!

When the rain hit, the men retired to the back porch to finish their cigars.


Oh yeah, yes we did.

Slip-n-Slide Video

Untitled from Shannon on Vimeo.

You know it's summer . . .

. . . when the slip-n-slide is out!

Yesterday I took all 3 kids to the Target (for the first time all 3!) to pick out a new slip-n-slide. They were so good, and Grayson and Max easily agreed on this double Lightning McQueen slide that has turned out to be a lot of fun! This morning Catalina came over to play too!