July 4th Weekend

We had a great weekend. Friday night we went to see Knight and Day with the Deans and the kids just played.  We always have fun.  On Saturday, Dean took Drew bowling and I took Danielle and Brinley to the mall. Sales galore! Danielle got some cute stuff for middle school. Then we met up later and saw Avatar, the Last Airbender. We have been excited about this movie because the kids have watched the show on Nickelodeon for forever. The kids loved it and were excited to realize that it is the first in what obviously was going to be a series.

On Sunday we dressed up for church and Dean took pics of the girls in their patriotic clothes and Drew in his, ahem, green shirt.  In his defense, he had nothing else.  The girls just happened to have these dresses in their closets.  But he was able to find a patriotic shirt to wear that night when we had friends over for BBQ and fireworks.  We had hamburgers, hot dogs, yummy salads, and Dean made cupcakes.  Then Dean took over for the fireworks and the rest of us sat watched.  When we weren't taking pictures that is.  We didn't get very many good ones, but here it is.

See how cute Malia's smile is in these pics?  I wish Brinley would pose just once!  It is like pulling teeth.

On New Years Day, the kids made a fire out of the left over firecracker stuff.  So they did it again.  Dean helped with some sign posts that we have laying around and then got out the marshmellows.  The kids loved it.  Hey, we make the mountain canyon life come to us around here.

Everyone left around 10:30, (the kids were having so much fun, we didn't even realize the time!) and Dean wanted to go out on the tramp and look at the stars for a while.  We brought out our phones with the Google sky app on and checked out the constellations and found all the planets.  Then we put away the phones and watched for falling stars.  Everyone got to see one, except Brinley started fading.  Dean asked her, are you tired?  She said no.  But then I grabbed her hand from the other side of Dean and she was out in 2 minutes.  I think I fell asleep next and Drew was last.  Not sure about Dean and Danielle and their order, but at 12:30 I woke up kind of uncomfortable and decided we better go in.  The memory of that star gazing is most definitely in my top 5 of all time for family memories.  Loved it.  Good times.  Wish we could freeze it right...now.  I love my family, I love this country.  I love 4th of July and fireworks.  I also love that we had three different neighbors spend the money to get the illegal ones so that we could partake.  Hee Hee.