Celebrating Fourth of July a few weeks late...

Fourth of July is the most fun holiday.  It requires casual dress and grilled finger foods and no gifts.  This year, my dad and sisters were in Mexico on their mission trip during 4th of July, so we decided to celebrate a few weeks late.  They just sold their camper this summer and bought a boat to play with instead.  So it was a perfect opportunity to do both.  The week before Cody came home from his parents with this old life jacket, I'm sure it was his from the 80's.  He wanted Harper to wear it, um... no.  So we bought her a new, lighter, non-expired, 100% safe life jacket and she loves it.  She wore it around the house and even got to learn to float with it in the bathtub.  

On Saturday morning, we decided to head to the lake early and let Harper play at the beach for awhile and swim.  She had fun but it turned out to be a cloudy, cool day.  The water was actually warmer than the air!  She swam with Cody for awhile and then we had a picnic near the campgrounds.  We finally walked to the boat ramp to wait for my family.

We were all pretty excited to get out on the boat.  It was sad that it was so chilly, but still fun.  Harper liked it, but kept asking Pop to go slower.  Taylor and Carleigh tubed, then Cody and Harper.  She didn't love it, and definitely didn't want to lay down like Cody was trying to get her to do.  So eventually, Taylor and Carleigh jumped in the water and just held on to the side of the tube while my dad pulled all of them.  It was pretty funny but we went slow enough that they were ok!  Eventually, they all swam near the shore and had some fun splashing around.  Kristi and I just sat and talked and enjoyed a nice, relaxing day!  

After the lake, we headed back to our house to have dinner and shoot fireworks.  We did dinner easy, hot dogs and hamburgers, always good for a fourth of July.  Then, we all sat around and got sorta sleepy waiting for the sun to go down.  We headed out at dusk and did the fun daylight ones first so Harper could see them.  She still does not like any of fireworks that pop or make a loud noise.  So finally I just took her to bed because she was pretty scared of the noises.  But she had fun with the sparklers, popping pagodas and the egg laying chickens.  Cody, my dad, Taylor and Carleigh shot most of them and did a great job.  It was a pretty good show for a home made one.  They didn't burn anything, except for getting close to the new wooden swing set.  It was a great day and I'm so glad they came up to celebrate.