Red White and Blue Fun!

Here are the kids sporting the 'colors' of the day! Since I can remember, it has been tradition for me to wear red, white, and blue on the 4th of July! It feels so festive and it gets me into the spirit of the 4th! So, I've had 11 years of fun dressing my babies patriotically! Now, Jordan even gets in on the planning and picking out of the red, white and blue attire for her brother and sister! Don't they look so cute?

We celebrated the 4th with good friends and good food!
Here are my best girlfriends Tisha, Dawn and I!

We had tons of fixin's... We chowed down on Tisha's 7-layer dip! It was 'to die' for!
There was lots of swim time had by all. Jillian wanted to be carried around by all the big girls but the big girls wanted to have their own fun so Jill ended up resentfully wearing a life jacket for the 1st part of the day!
Dad finally did join her for a little "swim lesson" time and Jillian was in heaven!

Big Girls having Big Girl F U N!

Jeff & Shay at the BBQ! We had so much good food... Burgers, Brats, Hot Dogs, Dawn's Homemade Potato Salad, Watermelon, Dawn's Mom's (Vangie) Homemade Amazing Salsa!, Peach Cobbler, Homemade Brownies, Blue Bell Ice Cream in many varieties!!! Tish said she gained 6 pounds over the weekend! I don't even want to know what the scale said after this feast!! It was All-American GOOD FOOD!
Here is Josh! He was in between the ages of all the kids-- He was too young for the big kid groups and just a little too old for the younger groups-- here he is as the "fish out of water" so to say! :) He eventually got to be sorda the 'boss' of the little kids! He was the leader of the jumping in and doing tricks/belly flops at the end of the night. It was very entertaining!
We didn't actually see any fireworks this year! The kids said they saw some from the upstairs window in one of the girl's rooms but they were straining to see them through a tree! Not exactly the tradition I'm used to...but We could HEAR them popping and crackling while all of us adults were playing an intense Tournament of WATER VOLLEYBALL!! It was really fun! The kids weren't allowed in the pool during the tourney-- they were vanquished to the hot tub or inside to play on the Wii!
Tish and Jeff were the dominant couple! LOL (even with Tisha's injured middle finger that was jammed when Dave spiked a ball over the net!)
We had a wonderful FULL DAY of celebrating! We had lots of good conversation-- We talked of our kids growing up so fast. The fears associated with that-- The other families already have DRIVING/DATING TEENS and I know we are not far behind with our beautiful Jordan! Shay was so hilarious doing a little cheer that he learned from one of his teenager soccer players-- he said he was giving the girls on the team a pep-talk/warning talk of sorts about boys and not letting them get in the way of your soccer and of your future plans and goals!! I so tried to get him on video doing the cheer! Let me describe...
STOP! (put your hand out to make people stop!)
DON'T TOUCH ME THERE!!! (put 1 hand flat under your chin & the other hand flat in front of your thighs)
THIS IS... MY NO! NO! SQUARE!!!!!!!
and repeat over and over!!! LOL
We were dying laughing as all the girls started doing the chant/cheer along with Shay as the leader! I guess one of his players told him, "Coach! don't worry about me! I've got it all down!" and then broke out into the cheer!! LOL
Anyways-- this may be one of those 'you had to be there' moments but it was a memory I want to remember!
We had some good times!
Enjoy our montage of the night...

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com