Celebrate America!

These first few photos are from Memorial Day weekend, but they seemed fitting to celebrate Independence Day as well.

Photo 154 of 365, taken May 26th:

Thank you, veterans and all the servicemen and women who are currently active in all branches of the military! Freedom always comes at a cost and it is humbling to think of what others have sacrificed to make this nation great.




This week we had lots of parades and gymnastics shows to kick off the 4th of July weekend celebrations.

Someone was captivated by her first sparkler ever!

And now for some freedom explosions in the sky ~ I thought some of them looked like flowers and others like planets, but they were all beautiful:








Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July and a Start of Summer Recap

Happy 4th of July!! Ours was very warm {fun too}, as was the case for most of the nation, but we are so thankful to celebrate the birthday and freedom of a great country, and one that we are truly blessed to live in!! Many of these pictures below were taken back in early June at one of the events that we always kick off Summer with ~ Reclaiming Our Heritage, Multi-Era Military Re-enactment. Our girls love going to this event so much and it's a wonderful way to learn about American History. It always makes me feel very patriotic to learn about the lives of American soldiers throughout the history of our country. There are so many who have made such a great sacrifice.

Due to funding issues, last year was supposed to be their Grand Finale event, but there were so many people disappointed that it was brought back for at least one more year.

They had an eat your weight in popcorn contest. Just kidding, but that's a lot of kettle corn and the five of us ate.it.all.

A serious conversation being had over kettle corn and root beer. I often wonder what they're talking about.

They had a booth where current military servicemen were applying fake wounds to any child who wanted one. To which Alyssa promptly said "No, thank you." But it was like artwork! This man was so careful with every detail of Emma's injury, and seemed to take a lot of pride in his work.

Emma loved her wound! She was very proud and kept staring at it like it was a badge of honor or something. In some ways, she is a tiny bit like the little boy her poor Daddy never had.

A close up of the wound we still have resting on a loose leaf sheet of paper because Emma can't bear to part with the fake shard of glass.

Rebekah was slightly less impressed with her bruise :)

We got to do lots of cool things like color patriotic pictures that were sent to soldiers currently deployed, sing patriotic songs, look at the first generation "viewmaster", see newspapers that date back to the American Revolution, and Emma tried to convince me she would wear the raccoon hat to school all Winter if we would buy it for her.

Alyssa not looking very comfortable on the bed of the injured.

And apparently we need to have another child so that Abraham Lincoln can have a face in this photo.

The same weekend back in June, and again for the 4th of July, the girls had parades and gymnastics exhibitions.


Aren't these patriotic leos the cutest?

And because my mom has to be one of the coolest Grandmas ever:
She and Alyssa competed as a relay team in a duathlon. Alyssa ran two miles, my mom biked 10 miles, then Alyssa ran two more miles. Pretty awesome, huh?

Alyssa finishing strong. She's all pumped to compete again next year!

4th of July Weekend

We drove to Southern Illinois for a wedding over 4th of July weekend. It was a long drive on mostly back roads, so it was very peaceful and we saw lots of wildlife along the way. We saw turtles and armadillos, and at one point a mother deer and her two babies stood in the middle of road just staring at us in confusion as to why we were on their road. It was sweet and reminded me of how our girls will watch from the sidewalk as an unfamiliar car drives down our cul de sac, immediately recognizing something that doesn't belong there.

As we were driving in parts of Missouri and Southern Illinois we saw a lot of flooding. We were approaching a bridge as I took this photo, and this line of trees opens up into vast farmland where right now the fields are completely underwater and the water is reaching well up into the tree branches. It was sad to see this knowing the impact it will have on the farmer's crops, and made me feel even worse for other places in the country where this same flooding has submerged people's homes rather than trees and fields in the flood waters.



We were on a mission to go see the "Liberty Bell of the West" which is a very old bell, older than the actual Liberty Bell, when all of a sudden the road ahead of us was under water. From a short stretch back Dave said he thought he saw water ahead, but most of the time that's just the sun creating a glare.



As we got closer though, we could easily see that we weren't going to be getting to the bell that day. The bird perched in the water fishing seemed pretty happy though. We love driving through places we've never been and seeing whatever happens to be there. In nearby Collinsville, we could have stopped at the world's largest ketchup bottle, but it didn't quite make the cut on our list of historically significant sites...to think it was within our reach and we passed it up.

We took a bit of an indirect route through St. Louis so we could have dinner at a restaurant Dave saw on the Travel Channel, Charlie Gitto's "On the Hill." It was amazing Italian food, birthplace of the toasted ravioli and in a very cool neighborhood. Sometimes the database that Dave keeps of interesting places/restaurants comes in handy!



As we were driving, I could see this bridge from a long distance back and I was hoping we were going to go over it. Sure enough we did, and we found the funnest thing on the other side...



Directly on the other side of the river, we had landed ourselves in Chester, Illinois. The home of Popeye!



It was such a cute little town and a pleasant surprise. There were cartoon scene murals painted on many of the buildings, and statues of the characters all around town.



A lot of the signs for the stores were just like this one, and all the store fronts were reminiscent of small town America. Everything was so cute, the people were so friendly and helpful. The town hosts a Popeye Picnic every September and we would give serious thought to bringing the girls there one year!

After a quick visit in Chester, we drove through the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail where we picked up a few bottles as gifts and a couple to donate to our Foundation's auction next year.



And of course, the whole reason we were in Southern Illinois was for Barry and Amy's wedding.



I loved the grasshopper greeting the guests from the rose petal as they signed the guestbook. It was a hot, hot day, but a beautiful wedding! Congratulations, Amy and Barry!



The next morning we went hiking in the nearby Shawnee National Forest. Dave had read ahead of time how nice the paved hiking trail was. As we got there, the trail we took was fine for walking on, and we saw some beautiful rocks and lookout points over the valley, but it was clearly not paved. We were actually thinking how nice it was ~ we didn't encounter a single other person on our whole hike. As we drove out of the park, we saw a different entrance, this time to a labeled hiking trail that was the paved one Dave had read about. Leave it to us to find the path less taken...



This was taken at Cave in Rock. We were on the Illinois side, but the shoot of land that you can see on the other side of the water in the back of the photo is Kentucky. They were running a car ferry back and forth and we thought it would have been fun to try it out, but we didn't have time. We wanted to be sure to get back to Sandwich in time for the fireworks...



With these little ladies. We have one little girl who loves the fireworks, and two others who could really do without the exploding, loud noises. I'll let you guess from the pics (even though they're blurry) who is who.

Loud fireworks and all, it was a perfect night.



I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful weekend. Happy 4th of July!