4th of July Weekend

Unlike last year, the weather for Fourth of July weekend was suppose to be pretty nice, so we packed our bags, grabbed some friends and family, and headed to the Lake House. Morgan and Kelton were ready to go!!


As always, my Dad was showing the kids another instrument that they could have some fun with. He is truly the Music Man.
We love spending time with the Mahoney family. Our kids match up perfectly and we love Jamee and Dennese. Funny because Dennese and I have been close for years, but we have few pictures documenting our relationship.
Our kids match up perfectly in ages all the way down. Makes play dates absolutely perfect.
Morgan and Kelton are betrothed......they just don't know it yet.
We are so grateful to my Dad for working so hard to keep this Lake House in our family. It's wonderful for me to see him here at the lake and so happy. It's where he belongs.
But my favorite part of trips to the lake is endless hours of family time, stripped of the TV, cell phones and computer.
Monday morning, we headed out on a pretty serious adventure. There is a movie, "Ring of Fire" that was filmed not too far from the cabin. In the movie, they drive a train off a cliff and let it crash..........and the train is still there. Recently, my Dad tracked it down and took us all to go see it.
It was a pretty serious undertaking to get everyone down the cliff. There are ropes in portions to help you repel down, and in portions, we had to hand the little kids down in assembly line format.
But the kids were amazing and we all made it to the bottom in one piece, and the train was very impressive.
It's been there for 40+ years, yet there are still parts in the river. You can actually climb through portions of the train.

John and Dea joined us for the day.

Kelton was a little nervous in parts and was a little too young to really appreciated what we were seeing but he LOVED riding on his Mommy's back back up the hill.
With my little Peyton love.
Back at the cabin, we enjoyed some sun, swimming and music.

Early in the weekend, while Jamee Mahoney was still there, the boys rigged up a catapult to launch water balloons. This little number worked WAY better than anyone of us expected.
I would say it was launched a good 60+ feet into the water. We played some dodge ball with people in the kayaks.
The catapult was put into use a little later in the weekend when the annual lake water fight started on the 4th of July.
My Dad also was able to bring out one of the Walk on Water balls. A good friend of his has been promoting this through Fairs all over the country and it didn't take long for my Dad to realize we could have some fun with this at the lake as well.
Here is Deaven in the ball, doing amazing well at staying UP.
The grown ups were even funnier to watch. It's completely dry inside and it's a weird sensation to be on top of the water.
Both nights we were there, we enjoyed huge campfires with lots of fireworks. The kids did great considering we kept them up until 11pm both nights.
Tuesday was GORGEOUS weather and we just spent the day playing in the water........and catching salamanders.
Oh, and a big "Girl's vs. Boys" water fight.
.........and yummy Popsicles!!
We came home on Tuesday evening and unpacked, but as I woke up Weds morning and I knew we had ONE more really nice day of weather (and we happened to have NO other obligations) so I packed up the kids again and we went to the beach.

Unfortunately, literally BLOCKS away from the beach, it got totally socked in with fog. We couldn't even see the water until we were right at it.
Of course the kids had fun playing anyway.
Deaven and Forrest were up to their necks in the water despite the conditions.
The girls had fun digging into the sand and created a huge "house" that they played in.
On the way home, we stopped at a fun park and played for another hour. This park had some pretty different toys and the kids loved it. The swings were HUGE dishes that you could lay back into. I laughed my head off swinging with Deaven.

Here is a quick video of Peyton in the ball at the lake.



Yay for summer!!!