Happy 4th of July!

Jason was excited yesterday because he finally had some time to work on the fireplace.  He set up a form to pour the mantle...I suppose it's not really the mantle but the support at the top of the opening.  I can't remember what that's called.

Then Reder grabbed the camera....

I have been letting the chickens run around the yard all day.  This is both good and bad.  The doggies no longer chase them.  In fact they seem to have lost interest.  They follow us around and we all love them.

Yesterday afternoon we had some friends over for a picnic.  Ruby got tired of swimming so went upstairs and changed into a fairy outfit, complete with wings and high heels.  I will say she is getting better at walking in her heels.  I don't know if this is a good thing or not!

And we even got to give baby Carter some cuggles!  He's a cutie.

Jason Kay and Reder played water balloons.  They were getting themselves into trouble...or more accurately, Jason Kay was getting Reder into trouble.  It was pretty funny.

Reder kept trying to get everyone else but in the end he was the wettest of them all:

Then of course we had to play the dress up game...Jason Kay trying to put on a bra.  Is that my Jason behind him scratching his head?

Steffany was trying to beat him:

 Scott is trying to quickly wiggle into the jumpsuit:

Run Forrest Run!

This Forrest can run really fast.  Who is it?

Kylie just had to try on those enormous whitie tighties:

And Ruby was curious about this contraption:

I asked Jason to take a picture of my homemade ice cream (I made coconut and vanilla) but the picture is mostly of me:

Then we did some fireworks.  I don't like things that fly so we did smoke bombs, worms, etc.  Kids thought this was great!  Note my kids are the only ones in their underwear:

I think Jason liked this more than them.  If I remember right this might be the first time in our married life that I let him buy fireworks!  I'm no fun, but I don't like them!

This morning we woke up to cool, dreary weather.  So what did we do!  Bake cupcakes!  We had cupcakes in the oven by 7:45 this morning!  Then I let them frost them however they wanted.  They are a mess but they were more careful that I guessed they would be.  This was fun.

This is a bad part about letting the chickens run the yard....they get into trouble!  Reder made this square foot garden at VBS.  Some radishes were starting to come up, but Pinkie discovered this is an awesome place for a chickie bed!!  Piggie is looking on, jealously awaiting her turn to wallow in it.  Reder wasn't too sad.  I told him everything growing in it is also in the garden.

After naptime I think we're going to head in to town to see Madagascar 3.  Summer is so fun!