My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday.  I mean, how can you beat warm weather, good friends (old and new), a day on the lake, BBQ, four-wheeling, sparklers, and fireworks?  The whole day, start to finish, was perfect.  I’m so thankful to live in America – the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the place where we can stuff our faces in the sun surrounded by loved ones. 🙂

Most days, after the girls have played relatively quietly in their beds for 30 minutes to an hour, I’ll let them continue to play outside of their beds until I’m ready for them to come downstairs (i.e. I’m done cleaning/napping/web browsing/exercising/stuffing my face with food I don’t want to share).  Today, when I went in to tell them they could come out of their room, this is what I found:

They had dumped out half their toys and started to build a fort between their closet doors.  These girls know how to entertain themselves!

Would you believe that the nonstop fun didn’t stop, even after we returned from the beach?  Jim’s sister’s family stayed with us for another wonderful week, so we packed our time together full of every possible kid-friendly activity.

We boated…

We camped at the Connecticut shore…

We hit the park…

We read books…

We played outisde…

We hit another park…

We ate lots of chocolate…

We slipped and slid:

We went to the bike trail…

And ate ice cream…

We bounced around…

We played tea party…

And we bowled (my kids’ first time!)…

We all wish the fun could have gone on forever!  We’re so glad for their awesome visit!