Happy 4th of July Weekend!

I love the 4th of July. Nothing is better than remembering the best things about being American. Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Religion. BBQ and Family. We hosted the in town family at our house Sunday for the annual party. We started by playing pool wars. We had 4 adults (Mommy, Daddy, Auntie K, and Papa) and all 3 kids (Little Miss, Racer, and Princess) in the pool with 8 water guns, 5 noodles, and 1 floaty also known as the Gun Ship. We had massive wars, kids v adults, everyone v Papa, etc. It was great fun. The kids kept yelling "FIREWORKS" then shooting the water guns in the air. We all clapped and oooooh'd and aaaaaah'd at their show. The water was perfect and the sun was just setting.

Daddy and I bought a 1/4 of a cow that we have named Gertrude from our boss, who is a rancher. The meat is super aged and yummy and we have a lot of it! So, thanks to Gertrude and Fry's Grocery store, we had quite the spread for our party. We ate inside and outside and all night long.
The kids watched movies and played Wii while most of the adults played Mexican Train Dominoes. We ACTUALLY finished an entire cycle of 13 games from 12 to blank. And thanks to all my hooligan supporters... I am the CHAMPION. It should have been Uncle Ray who was the leader all the way... until I blocked him and offered rewards to everyone else to do the same. Cutthroat Dominoes.... aha aha ha!
We interrupted our dominoes to jump in Joe, drive to a great little spot and watch the fireworks. The kids oooooh'd and aaaaaaah'd and then got itchy in the grass and wanted to go home. We stuck it out, threw some Pop Its in the parking lot to the crowd of dozens of kids whose parents didn't have counterfeit fireworks. (Note to the neighbors: the bottle rockets going off were not coming from MY house last night... they were coming from my YARD)
We all stayed up until MIDNIGHT, even Little Miss... who gave me the Stinkface when I told her No to having more snacks at 11:30pm. How do you explain to a 4 year old that they stayed up all the way until TOMORROW and so NO.. she could not have more ice cream!

All in all we had a FANTASTIC day. The party was a fun time and we love hanging with the family. Special shout out to Grammy, the Lawson family, and Uncle Matt... we missed you all terribly.

Corn and Farmer John

The farmer who operates the field by our house planted corn. We have been watching it grow with great interest. Basically Daddy has been waiting to reenact his corn stealing days from his youth. Little Miss and I had never actually TOUCHED corn stalks, so Daddy took us for a half mile walk to the corn. He was actually somewhat aghast that I have never been in a corn field, and was somewhat nervous about what happens in the stalks. "If you build it..." was all I could think... that and horrible memories of Children of the Corn. We walked to our corn field, but unfortunately it had been recently irrigated. No walking through the stalks for me. We did take a good nature hike, with Little Miss appropriately in her Sunday dress. We saw horseshoe imprints, watched a hive of fire ants go BANANAS when Daddy poured irrigation water on them, touched the corn stalks, walked through the weeds and bugs, and had a great time. Now every day when we drive by the corn field, Little Miss says she hopes Farmer John doesn't cut down OUR corn. She wondered where it will go then was all upset that Daddy said they were probably going to feed it to cows. "Mom, we don't HAVE any cows" ... ha ha .. had to explain it wasn't really "our" corn. No need for cows!