July 4th & a Camping Trip

July Fourth. I love this holiday! There's just something about American Flags flying in the neighbors yard, being outside with family, parades, BBQs, watermelon, adorable red white and blue clothes, and fireworks that I have always adored. We had my mom, dad and sister still in town from Lukas' birthday to celebrate the 4th with. Our cute little town has concerts in the park, here we are enjoying the music the evening before the Fourth.

So our town has a 4th of July parade that runs downtown that is just awesome. Only issue is that the entire town (like literally and then some) comes out and it is just insane! Luckily, my awesome dad decided to head down around 6am and saved us some amazing front row seats in the shade. Yep, even in the shade. I told you he is just awesome. Look how cute my kids were in their red, white and blue! Eeeek, aren't Addilyn's piggies just adorable?! And her bow. Ugh. Love.

Along with my family, we met some friends in our sweet parade watching spot for some fourth of July fun. I had high hopes of an adorable little picture of these friends that they would have for years to come but this is the best we got. Lukas: "Seriously, mom? Where's my Thor hammer? I need to go fight something." Ember: "Ummm, I have a booty in my face."Addilyn: "Done. Just done." Yeah. Look for a better picture next year, k? Cool. 

Told you Lukas was looking for his Thor hammer. Pictures typically turn out much better when he has a super-hero accessory. 

Maybe we will enter him in the parade next year. I mean, he keeps us pretty entertained, might as well share this personality with the town, huh? Haha. Love him

\

Best part of the parade was seeing Jeff's dad (aka Loompa) playing his tuba with his band. Lukas was thrilled and beyond excited when Loompa even waved at him! WOW!

The kids did so great for all 140 + floats. Addilyn loved waving at the people, dogs and kids and watching all the entertaining things going by. Oh, and the candy. Of course she loved the candy being handed right to her. We came home with a rather sticky little munchkin. 

My sister, mom and I came home from the parade and started prepping for our fourth of July party! Yum. We obviously had fun. Thanks, Pinterest, for the fun ideas.

That evening we heading out to see the local fireworks. Much to our dismay, they started 30 minutes earlier than we thought so we ended up watching from the side of the road. Good thing the kids didn't care and were super thrilled seeing the "big lights" in the sky!

My family headed home, and Jeff had the rest of the weekend off of work so we decided to take advantage of the time and headed out to the yurts for a little family camping trip. We've always loved camping, but adding kids to the fun is always a bit more of an adventure. (Side note: Definition of Adventure: A super exciting trip that at least once during it, you think "I wish we didn't do this"). My kids adore the outdoors so we spent the majority of the time before it got dark wandering the woods, finding giant sticks and admiring the bugs. 

Love this adorable little family of mine... 

Lukas loved showing Addilyn things about the outdoors. And she loves holding his hand. So they made a pretty cute pair. 

Addilyn was quite thrilled to just sit and play in the dirt. And Zoe's water. And the combination was really exciting. Oh, and then feeding Zoe dirt. Nice. 

Lukas helping Daddy with dinner on the BBQ. 

Once it started getting dark and colder, Lukas couldn't wait to actually sleep in the yurt! Also, he got to sleep right next to Mommy and Daddy so this was super exciting for him. And then comes the part of the adventure where you say to yourself "Umm, maybe we shouldn't have done this." Addilyn usually sleeps really well but decided around 1 am that is was party time. We had yurt-neighbors that were literally like 10 feet away and I'm sure could here every little noise she was making, which of course was getting louder and louder as time went on. Needless to say, Jeff decided to go drive her around to see if she would fall asleep; she didn't so he headed home to put her in her bed. Our house is only about 20 minutes away, so it wasn't a huge deal. Overall, it was a great family camping trip and at least 1 out of 2 kids loved every second of it. For that, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Hope you enjoyed our little adventure! Now go get outside on this gorgeous summer day! Smell the summer air and take the time to see the sun shining thru the trees. Our God is truly amazing, isn't He? 

Lukas' 3rd BirthDAY!

So here we are again finishing up posts that happened weeks ago. Guess that will be the story of my life until, you know, forever. ;) Anyways, let me re-cap the week after Lukas' birthday party when we had family up to visit and the actual day of this little dude's birthday.  My dad, mom, sister, brother and sister-in-law all stayed for the majority of the week after Lukas' party. Besides my sister, they all stayed in yurts (I know, you're like, a what?!?) and came to our house during the day. I always love having family around! Maybe its because they lived across the country for most of the past 10 years or maybe its just because my family is just plain awesome. We spent Lukas' birthday-eve in the great outdoors at the yurts. We had burgers for dinner and Lukas even got to open one present from Mommy & Daddy... 

 

A Stomp Rocket! Rated best toy for a 3-year old boy. Yep, it was just as awesome as they say. 

Addilyn hanging out with Nana and Grandpa. 

Lukas was pretty concerned about Uncle Dude's new wardrope. He tried to keep reminding him that this was a girl shirt...

 ...Poor Dude. 

Of course we had to celebrate with birthday-eve cupcakes too. 

Monday, July 1st was the big day my sweet Lukas turned 3!  We spent the day just celebrating this little guy and making sure he knew how much he was loved. We started off with some confetti pancakes for breakfast...

...and then headed to Sedona for the morning. We took Lukas fishing at the trout farm, which was just awesome! Jeff has taken Lukas fishing once before at a lake around our house and after about 30 minutes Lukas got very discouraged and upset that he hadn't caught a fish. Oh yeah, I guess we should have prepped him about fishing and patience... Oops. Needless to say, the Trout Farm was right up his alley.Grandpa and Uncle Dude showed him the ropes of catching a fish and within 30 minutes he had caught 4! I mean literally,  it took him 15 seconds to catch the first fish. Perfect amount of time for the attention span of this 3 year old!

The look on his face as he pulled in that first fish was just priceless. And then he just stared at it for a good while like he couldn't believe it was real! 

So HAPPY! So PROUD! Ah, they're a cute pair.

Hmm, must have missed Auntie Jo, but here's the rest of the crew on the b-day fishing adventure. 

Me and my birthday boy. Love him. 

   After he caught 4 giant trout, Lukas watched the guy at the farm get them ready for us to take home and eat. Yum!

On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen for some birthday ice cream and lunch and then home for his birthday nap. Yes, everything on your birthday has to have birthday before it; it just sounds that much more spectacular. Stop it. It's true.

Once the birthday boy woke up from his birthday nap, we played outside and Lukas had fun playing in his new sand/water table. The best part was obviously scuba diving... 

And then it was time to prepare our freshly caught trout dinner. How cool, the birthday kid caught us his birthday dinner! Of course 4 fish couldn't feed our multitude so hamburgers were also prepared. Lukas ate an entire trout by himself and LOVED it! What?! I know.

After dinner Lukas opened some more presents from Mommy, Daddy and Addilyn, we had cake and just loved on and celebrated Lukas. 

Lukas was thrilled to whip out his Thor skills on Uncle Dude with his new hammer and Thor helmet.

 

For the next several days he kept saying "it's still my birthday, you know" and I couldn't break his heart so we just kept the decorations up and ate cake and sang to him for the next several days. When you're 3 and love birthdays as much as your mom, its totally ok to celebrate for weeks... I mean days. 

 Thanks for stopping by, hoped you enjoyed seeing the fun that this birthday kid had. Ok, can I admit that I'm a little sad my kids birthdays are over for the year? Don't judge but I've already started Christmas shopping for that very reason. Yep, I'm for real. Haters gonna hate. Yay for birthdays and celebrating the gifts God has given us in our children. Have a beautiful day, my friends! If you're feeling it, maybe you can go rollerskate around the living room in your undies. Just make sure you close the windows first...