Happy July 4th!!

Happy July 4th!!! We had an amazing time celebrating with my in-laws.  Beautiful decor, great weather (we were able to be outside the whole time without melting) and amazing food!

The group of kiddies!  I love seeing them all together.  I'm super sad to see Nat go to college only because she will be greatly missed!!

They all love to swim and play, here's my gal swimming towards me...

 

I LOVE the picture below!!  How fun, right!!

Then afterwards, the girls were watching Taylor Swift on tv but then got to telling secrets....

Smores anyone??  Tami found the biggest marshmallows you have ever seen.... seriously they were like the size of the palm of your hand!!!  HUGE!  and oh so yummy!

Next was some sparkler action.

Then....OHHHH these were soooooo cool - my dad brought the kids some floating lanterns - we did feel a bit like we were in the Tangled movie but really - they were pretty darn awesome (once we overcame our fear of lighting the neighborhood on fire)!!!

I suspect some people thought they were UFOs of some sort  HA!  We were able to watch them until the candles burned out, they were really neat!

Then, the time came.... it was time for the fireworks!!!!  However, the kids didn't watch them at all.  The girls were practicing tumbling and doing cartwheels and somersaults and Jonathan was busy being "shot" by all the booms.... he was throwing himself all over the place with every boom - it was hilarious!!!!  I really enjoyed watching them have so much fun!

Picture below, Mikayla after cartwheel.....fireworks in the background LOL. 

Always some time for cousin wrestling!!! 

We had such a GREAT time!  Probably the best time ever!!!!

50 for 50.....say what???

We have a LOT of big birthdays in our families this year...and a lot of them have "5s" in them.

We have 2 turning 50, 1 turning 55, 3 turning 75 plus 2 - 15 year anniversary's (potential lotto numbers?)

So last week we celebrated 2 of the 50s and 1 of the 75s. 

For one of the 50s Mikayla, and I had to do a lot of secret planning.....

and we came up with the 50 for 50 plan..... (granted I could only do this for one of the birthdays...you'll see why).....

what that officially means is that for Michael, he was turning 50 - he got a gift for each year of life...meaning 50 gifts....

we had so much fun buying, planning, counting, re counting, planning, buying some more, counting, recounting, wrapping and phew.... it all came together....  shockingly - the basket below held 49 of the gifts.... wow!!!

Mikayla decorated with penny's on the table too.... 

When we showed Michael and told him what we did... his reaction was priceless.... "you WHAT..... you got me 50 presents.....?"  he was so shocked and so sweet about it (he was maybe hoping for three presents), it made me so happy to see him so surprised and excited and well, like a little boy about his birthday!!

We also made him a cake, well the cake was officially for him and for my dad (one of the 75s) because we just can't eat two cakes in as many days....

Here is the cake below.   Mikayla was 100% in charge of decorating it. 

We chose to put 5 candles on it to represent some of the 5s going on...and well we didn't want to burn the house down with 125 candles...hello inventory of candles!

We went to Carrabbas for dinner, it's Michael's all time favorite restaurant!  He dressed for the occasion LOL!  He is sporting some fashionable girls sunglasses.......

We came home after the dinner and had cake and ice cream.  Now, the cake....

the neat thing about this cake is that it was a pinata cake....

Singing!  (to Michael and Dad)

Time to blow out the candles (notice the best helper ever is very involved!)  (makes me so happy!!)

Then SURPRISE!!!  Pinata cake - you cut it open and it's filled with candies!! Can you say holy.amazing.cake!

Then present time!!!!  I didn't catch too many of gifty reactions because we were all "in the moment" he was exhausted by the time he opened everything up!  It.was.awesome!! 

His gifts ranged from a pack of gum (I was desperate for ideas by then) to cookies, to socks, to guitar supplies, to shirts, gift cards, belt, shoes, Nerf guns...LOL.... you name it - it was probably in there.

but his biggest gift by far....was.... number 50

the new.....

WOW!!!  what a great birthday - it was as much planning as it was watching him take it all in. 

Hopefully it was memorable, I know Mikayla will always remember when her Dad turned 50!!

Good times!

We had a great Father's Day and Michael said it was his best one EVER!  yay!!  Dad came over and we made BBQ Chicken with all the trimmings.  Mikayla loves any reason to have a party. HA!!

Awwww so very loving!!!

We were out to dinner one night and Mikayla and I had much to discuss between Father's Day treats and birthday (coming up fast) plans.  I guess Michael knew we were up to something....and wanted to prove our sneakiness!

For Father's Day Michael got a shirt (see picture below)

HA, just kidding (and yes that is a dollar bill folded up to look like a collared shirt - I told him if it didn't fit we could exchange it HA)  (I'm on a money origami roll I guess).  Anyway, the trick was that the money went inside the box below....  (that I made out of paper)(and he crushed taking it out of the box and was very confused at what in the world we were giving him) then wrapped that inside a shirt box...you know...traditional shirt for Father's Day, so this was a shirt that wasn't really a shirt......  The idea was that his gift was to upgrade his phone to the iphone 5 (so I didn't actually have the phone yet and I wanted a clever way to present it to him)- he LOVED it!!!

Two happy people at the end of the fun day!! 

Below is my little gal who LOVES to pose for the camera.  We were picking roses and she wanted to pose :)  OK, I'm not one to say no to a photo op....

Then, this little pepper made me smile!!  It is a poblano pepper from our garden and I cut the stem off.  I'd say it's a happy pepper, wouldn't you?  The pepper was completely unaltered in any way, I cut the stem off and this is what was inside :)

So there we have it!!!  Have a great week!

Summer time!!!

We seem to be running in circles since school let out but we're finding our new groove.  I do love the lighter schedule obligations during summer time!! AND the lighter traffic!!!

We've been playing quite a bit, swimming, boating just having fun.  Mikayla started her summer camp program and we're adjusting to that (and by adjusting I mean transition...yikes it's hard to transition) but we're making it just fine. 

Anchors away.... Nana gave Mikayla some anchor earrings :)

Little stinker wouldn't pose nicely for me to take a picture but these are fun all the same.

This was Mikayla's second day at summer camp (they have a fabulous program, off site field trips twice a week, one on site per week, swimming days, splash days, cooking every other Friday, crafts - next week she's going to make a pillow!!  how cool is that!)

Mikayla brought Saige with her :)

She's ready!

and this happened within less than 2 minutes of me picking her up...the poor darling was EXHAUSTED!!!