Happy Fourth of July!!

Happy Fourth of July!! We hope you all had a great weekend! We sure did. Especially my kids. We had the Mahoney kids with us this weekend as their parents ran a M-A-R-A-T-H-O-N down in Portland. Our families match up perfectly all the way down; 8/9 year old boys, 5/6 year old girls, and 2 yr olds at the end, which we intend to marry off and seal the deal. :) We are really lucky to have the Mahoney's in our lives......we love them!
Friday we just hung around the house and enjoyed the weather. Deaven and Korban actually went with Forrest's family up to Mt. Rainer for a big hike. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to show off for that soon. While the boys were off hard a work, the younger 4 kids had a "clothing optional" party in the backyard.
Saturday we went out to the lake to enjoy the 85+ degree weather and have some family time. I think the kids were in the water for 6 hours straight.
After an awesome BBQ dinner, my Dad decorated the boat so we could go join the boat parade.
Will and I taking two seconds for ourselves between caring for the 6 kids!!
The boat parade is a long standing tradition at the lake where people decorate their boats and troll around the lake tooting their horn as all the other families stand on their docks and wave and cheer....so we thought. After we got in line for the parade, we starting to notice home-made shields, MAJOR super soakers, water balloon sling shots, etc. The "parade" was actually code for "ENTIRE LAKE MASSIVE WATER FIGHT"!! It started as boats vs. the dock people, but turned into every man for himself, boat on boat too. We were totally unarmed and unprepared. My Dad, would weave through the different fights as Korban and Deaven yelled, "Come on! Is that all you got?!" WE GOT DRENCHED!!! It was so much fun! Have you ever participated in a water fight with over 200 people?! Craziness! We have a plan for next year.........
Then we came back to the house, got dry clothes on and prepared for fireworks. This is the best part of the lake because I am REALLY stingy about buying any fireworks. The cost is insane. BUT apparently everyone else on the lake bought LOTS of them. Every year the fireworks are amazing and they are shot off all around the edges of the lake......for HOURS! We often jump in the boat and float out in the water so they literally shoot up over your head. Incredible.
I loved the fireworks shooting over the moon. AND they started them early, which was nice for the little kids. It's hard to do fireworks justice in a picture, but I thought this one was pretty cool. This is just one side of the lake, but this could have been a panoramic view all the way around.
A couple fun, short videos to remember the day. The first one, again, doesn't do any justice to the show, but this type thing, bigger and better, went on for almost 2 hours.

The second video is of the water fight going on during the parade. Too fun!!

Hope you all had a great weekend with friends and family!! Blog to ya soon!