Happy Be-lated 4th!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July. We ended spending ours with friends. The Walker family came to our house around 2:30pm and we all went up to the "I Love America" celebration.

There were a good number of people already there and even more when we left a couple hours later. We even found a couple more families from our church there too. One of the families included Drew's best friend (he was pretty happy about that)
(Drew's best friend is the other little boy in the picture - he is almost 3 months younger than Drew...the little girl next to him is about 4 months older than Drew...and the girl on the end is 9 months older than Drew)

Zach and some of his little friends. The little girl in the middle is exactly 3 weeks older than Zach and the little boy is a week younger.

The kids had fun sliding down some of those big blow-up slides and other blow-up entertainment things. Since the longs were already pretty long they only got to do a few things before they got too hot and cranky (it was 90 but thanks to the humidity felt more like 92 or higher). We saw the little airshow and the skydivers.

We tried to talk Drew into taking a helicopter ride with John or I, but that was a definant - "No!" All the games were free and they even were handing out free bottled water (they went through 7,200 of them during the day) and they gave out 7,500 pounds of watermelon! There were also local business selling sandwhiches, snowcones (YUM!I had a HUGE cherry one.), funnel cake (John had one of those), etc. Throughout the day there were also local christian bands playing on the main stage.
It was really cool how the whole thing had a feel of a huge church picnic. And with over 250 acres, there was plenty of room to move around in. All around families had put up tents and canopies while teenagers played baseball, frisbee and volleyball. There total count for the day came to over 80,000 people.

After we left, the Walkers came over to our house and we had BBQ and corn on the cob...and the kids got to play for awhile. All in all a nice relaxing day...although a hot one. :)

This morning I got up and ran errands and then went to use the second gift certificate John got me for me birthday for an hour massage. Aaaahhhhhh! SO nice! They are all used up now though :( When I got home it was time to trim our trees. The big one in our backyard was REALLY bad! They were having a terrible time cutting under it because so many of the branches were hanging down. I ment to get a before picture, but I forgot. So all I have is some after pictures. Here is the "after 2 hours work" pictures. They still need some more work but they are SO much better.
Two of three of the front yard trees

The monster tree in the backyard. Before trimming MANY branches reached all the way to the ground. And our STILL unfinished playground area there next to it. The weeds are going to have to be killed again before we get the pea-gravel in there...maybe by the end of the summer :)

The pile of all the cut off branches. Now I just need to find a way to haul them up to the drop-off center. :)

Ok I have rambled WAY too much tonight. I need to get to bed since I have a sick little one that I am sure will have my up a good part of the night again. Poor Zach not only had a runny nose, cough and little fever...but he also has at least 2 of his upper teeth coming in. He is NOT a happy camper to say the least! I need to have some energy for working in the church nursery tomorrow during Sunday School too! UGH! :) Have a great rest of the weekend!