Fourth of July weekend

First of all, we hope everyone had a great Fourth of July. We sure did, and the kids had a lot of fun too. Here's some of the stuff we did over the weekend.

We went to the parade in the morning. We all had red, white, and blue on, although you can't really tell from this picture.

Parker had a lot of fun, and got lots of candy. He liked the horses the best.

There wasn't much for Maddie, but she had fun just being with the family :-)

Just a picture of Maddie and I with the trick bike riders in the back.

Then later that day we went to a barbeque at Aunt Joann's and then went to the fireworks down on the river. Maddie was interested in the fireworks for the first few minutes, but then went back to playing around.

Parker, on the other hand, did not like the noise at all. He sat like this (with Dad's hat over his face) for the first 10 minutes.

Then he was okay watching them, as long as Dad covered his ears.

After a while, Maddie layed down and watched the fireworks like this. Cute, eh?

This is the "after" picture: both kids fell asleep on the way home, and slept in the strollers while we did our own fireworks at Aunt Joann's house.

The next day we went to a near-by lake and had fun in the sun.

Parker didn't go in the water too much, but had lots of fun in the sand.

Maddie liked playing with toys at the water's edge and splashing around. She loves the water!

Here's Parker and Maddie playing together.

After a while, Parker decided to smear wet sand all over his face and body. What possessed him to do that, I have no idea. But it was kind of funny looking.

Maddie having more fun.

TJ found a fish in the water and caught it. Parker thought it was quite amazing, since he's never seen one that big and that upclose. Of course he didn't know that the fish was half dead (which is how TJ caught it), but what he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?

Maddie all done at the beach, read to go back to the car.

We hope you all had a great Fourth of July weekend too!!

Finally!!

So Madisyn is now 8 1/2 mo old (9 months old on the 13th), and she was still not crawling/skooching/army crawling...nothing. She's just been so content just to sit there and watch everything and has had no inclination to move. Now Parker on the other hand, started to skooch when he was 5 1/2 mo old, started crawling and pulling himself up to a stand at 7 mo old, and started cruising around the furniture at 8 1/2 mo old. So I've been thinking to myself for a while, "Come on girl, you have got to get moving!" Well, she finally has. Hallelujah! She just up and started it about two days ago, much to my surprise and absolute excitement. So here's a video of her new accomplishment.