Happy July Birthday to...

Jantzen, Elsie and the USA.  More about that shortly.

On Sunday night, July 1, Shawn arrived from Texas. Monday a.m. Steve and I had a meeting up north so we left Tiffany, Shawn and Abigail to do their own thing.

After our meeting, Steve "borrowed" the backhoe again so that he and a friend could do more work on our lot.  About 5 hours later, we have a big flat area on the back corner of the lot for a future barn/workshop--Steve's retirement dream building.

 While he was busy hauling dirt, I spent a little time with Hilary and the kids.  Here
Korinne cooks mac and cheese while Jenna joins in for the eating.  We headed home before dinner as Heather, Aaron and kids were on their way to our house.  We had a houseful on Monday night but fortunately Tiffany's family members were all asleep before Heather's family arrived so there was no dramatic discussion about the sleeping arrangments.  Everyone just went quietly to bed.  Ahh! Nice!

 The next morning after homemade pancakes, Tiffany, Shawn and I took the kids to the condo pool.  Everyone really had a good time.  Shawn got all the kids involved in games.  He managed all of that without ever really getting in the pool.  Tiff and I handled the little ones.  We had the place to ourselves and with the temps almost 100, it was refreshing.

 Back at the house, we prepared a birthday lunch and a cupcake party to honor Jantzen on his 10th birthday and Elsie on her 5th.  It's always fun to have a group to celebrate birthdays!  Happy Birthday, Jantzen and Elsie! It was Jantzen's actual birthday but Elsie's is on Friday, the 6th.

 Just as quickly as they came, Heather and Aaron's family left for a big family photo shoot with Aaron's family.  It was fast and furious in such a nice way.
It was important to get to bed on time because Tiffany and Abigail had their big race early on the morning of July 4th.  Tiffany joined nearly 800 runners for a 5K and Abigail followed right behind in her 1K.  They both did very well and we were proud of them.  It was a pretty hot day and with so many wild fires in our area recently, Tif hasn't been able to run outdoors for several days.  Great job, girls!

 Of course we watched the local 4th of July parade.  Abigail got plenty of candy and a few hugs from costumed animals.  We also hung around the Fun Days activities for a couple of hours. Tif will post photos of that part of our day. We enjoyed the local celebration.  I deviated from my usual patriotic attire to wear my Mia Love tee shirt.  Orange is not my color but I will sacrifice to promote Mia. Go Mia!

 After requiring Abigail to take a short nap, we recruited Shawn to cook some of his fantastic quesadillas.  Yum. Yum.  Then we headed out to the Sandy parade where Abigail and I handed out flyers and candy in support of Mia's campaign.  Abigail got to ride quite a bit in a little cart pulled by a guy riding a bicycle.  She had a ball.  She thought it was really cool to be in a "real" parade.  It was pretty big too.

The nap was required so that Abigail was allowed to stay up late for fireworks.  It was a busy day and delightful to share it with our family Texans.  Hooray for our country.  I love the USA!