Swimming

It's not summer without a blog post about swimming.  This is what the kids have done a LOT this summer.  Lots and lots of swimming.  It's my kids' favorite thing to do whenever they get the chance.  I'm not a fan of the pool at all!  But my kids like it so much that I go.  Plus it's the only thing you can do in the hot KS summer without dying.  (Side note: why is it "dying" and not "die-ing"?  The English language is so weird!)

4th of July

We had a fun 4th of July!  It started out with a flag ceremony and a pancake breakfast at the park with people from church.  I didn't think about taking pictures.   I did get a silly on of Elizabeth playing with buckets that were centerpieces at the breakfast that someone let her take home.  And Caleb wearing crazy star glasses from Grandma.  Thank you for the package Grandma!

 Later in the day, we went to a parade.  Yes, I said PARADE!  This is a big deal because since we moved here, we have never been able to find a parade for the 4th of July.  I found one this year!  It was a small city parade, which was near perfect because there weren't huge crowds and the parade only lasted about 45 minutes.  But it was still fun with a few floats, horses (gotta have horses for Katie!), and lots of candy throwing.  That's about all the kids expected so we were happy.  Plus the weather was perfect!

  Anna brought a friend from church.  We always seem to have extra people with us lately.

 I didn't realize Caleb was doing weird things with his finger.  Even after seeing these pictures I couldn't figure out what he was doing.

 Until this picture.  You can see he has on a "ring of power".  NOW it makes sense!

 We were across the street from a huge soy bean field.  I thought it was pretty, so I took a picture.

 We got there too early because we didn't know how many people would be there.  We got there an hour early and even that was too early.  (See, awesome parade... no waiting!)  So the kids waved to cars that were still driving by to see how many they could get to wave.  I was surprised by how many people waved back.  And I was surprised that they could do this for an entire HOUR.

 Finally, the parade!  And candy!

I guess I took a lot of pictures with Caleb "front and center".  This was his first parade.  It was fun to watch him figure out exactly what a parade is.

After that, we watched fireworks.  I didn't take pictures of that either.  I guess I was a picture slacker on the 4th of July.  Too much fun and relaxing going on.

Oh wait, Blake took one of Caleb with his BFF.