Let Freedom Ring-July 4, 2012

We celebrated July 4th at my sister's house.  It was hot!  It was fun!  We ate and drank a lot!

I was responsible for tasty adult beverages for the day.  I went with Red, White & Blue Sangria.  It was a big hit!

Next, the kids and I made star cookies.  We had a lot of patriotic sprinkles that needed to be used!   This is my favorite roll and bake sugar cookie recipe.

The kids love to decorate cookies!

Lots of cookies!

Everyone had fun at Aunt Ashley and Uncle Jon's house after we spent the morning at the pool.

The boys played a lot of video games.

Jon and Will.

Aunt Ashley made a watermelon cake (all fruit dessert).

Ashley, Mom & me.

Our family showing our red, white and blue!

Despite the fact that it was like 100+ degrees, the kids played outside on the swing set.

We ate yummy chicken legs and wings.

I tried to get a good picture of all the kids ...

But they just wanted to be silly!

Meme and Poppy.

We decided to forgo fireworks this year because it was hot, hot, hot and the kids were tired, tired, tired.  Not a good combo!!

Summer Swim 101

Swim lessons were a big hit this year!  I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to take them earlier in the summer because (1) we had already been to the beach twice by the time they started, and (2) Claire was already swimming like a fish, but everything turned out great!  Claire learned how to crawl stroke and David learned how to swim!  Hooray!

First day of swim lessons.  8:30 AM came bright and early!

Baby Luke did this for 30 minutes everyday for 2 weeks.  It was too hot to do anything else!  He is a big fan of the Leapfrog videos on Netflix.

Here are a bunch of random pictures of swim class.  As you can see, they had a fun 2 weeks.

 

Claire and David with their swim instructors.

Swim medals.

David in "Gymnastics Camp"

I've already posted about Claire's summer camps, but David had some fun activities too. 

His FAVORITE was his class at My Gym.  We've never done My Gym before because it is so expensive!  But, I ran across a groupon-type deal that covered the cost of our membership, 4 weeks of classes and 4 open-play passes (for a fraction of the cost) so I thought we would give it a try.  Let me say, he totally LOVED it.  And I am now completely drinking the My Gym kool-aid.  That boy smiled the entire time he was there ... every week.  It was such a joy to see him enjoy something so much.  (Now I'm going to have to figure out a way to afford it in the fall.) 

These pictures were from his last class of the summer.  David is in the yellow shirt and red shorts.  And that blue tub in the corner is a ball pit.

Time for warm-ups/stretching.

Handstands.

Balance beam.

The is the first time Claire has had to watch and wait for David to do an activity.  Let me just say that patience is not a virtue that she has yet!  She was dying to get out there with him!