First Family Fourth of July!

It was SO GREAT to have my mom here for the boys' first 4th of July!

She came June 28th and got to stay until July 11th!  It was a fabulous two weeks!!!  The boys loved her and of course she loved them right back!!!

We did a lot of quality family time and the many plans of sites to see together kind of went out the window, taking a second seat to good family time.  It was GREAT!!!

I LOVED waking up knowing that she was here and that we had many more mornings of waking up to her!  Though that joy started to fade as her departure date began to approach.  But we didn't let her having to leave interrupt any fun while she was here!

The sad part is that most of the pics taken were on HER camera and when we went to copy the pics, we did not have the right cord to connect her camera to our computer.  Such a bummer.  We will have to get them from her.

Here are some pics of our time with her and our First Family Fourth of July!

 Sami thought it would be fun to put one of the 

tees Grandma Faithie brought him on Kaleab

 "Yeah....I'm cool like my brother!"

Sami helping mom open one of her birthday presents.

Marshmallow soccer ball sucker Grandma brought to Sami.

 Part of 4th of July breakfast.  THANKS Pinterest!

So GREAT to share the first family 4th with my mom!

 Sami got the prize for best decorated bike 

at the neighborhood block party!

 Neighborhood Bike Parade!

 Watermelon Eating Contest.

 Kaleab taking in the events

 Water balloon contest.

YUP!  This one got him wet!  :)

Sami and Jeff went to the outdoor pool with some of the others, while mom and I visited after getting K down for a nap.  We all rejoined for a BBQ.  Mom and I enjoyed making a red/white/blue cake, mom made red/white/blue layered jello cubes, and Sami and I made chocolate covered pretzels with red/white/blue sprinkles.  Yes, you guessed it......pics are on my mom's camera.  SO FUN to prepare for the holiday with my mom though!  It is not very often we have family in town for holidays like this one!  {big smile}

The kiddos then tried to make boats out of natural materials (tree bark, sticks, leaves, etc) and we all walked down to the river to see whose would float.  Sami's floated so well he couldn't catch it!

The evening ended with fireworks with the same awesome neighbors.  Baby Kaleab wasn't even scared of them!  He got a bit upset when someone let off one that kept on popping and kept on popping and kept on POPPING!  But by this time Jeff got called into work (his holiday to be on call and we got to share the entire day with him up to this point!), and we all packed up and went home.

All in all, a FABULOUS First Family Fourth of July!