Happy 5th of July?

I love love love the 4th of July!  Ever since I can remember we would spend the long holiday weekend camping with friends and family, usually camping in the Black Hills, watching a parade of some sort, and of course the big fire works display!
Even after moving to Bismarck we would have a back yard BBQ with friends or family and then the last couple of years we have went to the HUGE Mandan parade and then back over to watch the fire works show---until this year.
Josh's Mom retired from teaching this fall and to say our kids have spent a little time at the farm this summer is an understatement!!!  Anna more then the other two, but after vbs and her week at camp Metigoshi, our little touriest will have been gone a total of 7 weeks this summer!!!  WOW--they have had so much fun!  She has made cakes, went to cousins houses, had cousins over there, been to the lake, and much much more!  I love the memories they are making and RuthAnn is always the first to say, it won't be many more years before she/they will be too old and will no longer want to come to Grandma's house....

So Josh and I spent the 4th of July in Bismarck alone, he had to work on Friday, so we did go up to Powers Lake Friday after work!  We did take in the parade--on TV :)  We made it over to the art in the park in Mandan and had a late lunch, stopped by a friend of Josh's new home, and then just hung out here at home and watched the fire works go off  from the capitol in our front lawn....it was just weird! 

Friday when Josh got off work, we stopped and bought some fireworks and off to Powers Lake we went!  So here are some pictures of us celebrating our 5th of July this year....we got to Powers Lake around 8 on Friday night and we did light off some fireworks--side note, I'm terrified of even the little ones...so I watched...from a safe distance and did do a sparkler or two :)


Josh and the kiddos :)




Grandma RuthAnn and the kids!



Anna loved the smoke bombs and would light a couple at a time so the colors would mix!



Addy loved the tanks and airplanes




Zach's favorite has always been the tanks, so Josh got a whole BOX of them!  He was so excited and had a great time!!

 Most of Saturday was spent out at the lake--we were out there for tacos in a bag at noon and didn't get back to the farm until after six!  The kids have so much fun with their cousins swimming in the lake up there!  It was a beautiful day, minus the wind and a good time was had by all!

Sunday we had to leave a little early as Addy had her first drop off birthday party!  It was one of her preschool classmates and down at Fun on the Run :)