Our Little Firecrackers!

One of our traditions is to spend the 4th of July with Grandma and Grandad. They live in a small Wyoming town in the middle of nowhere (literally)! You know you live in the middle of nowhere when the "big city" is amost an hour away and its claim to fame is a Walmart and a McDonalds! :)

It may be a small town, but it is full of big hearted people and we always look forward to our visits.

The day started with a parade, where Granddad drove his "float", an antique tractor.

Like all 4th of July parades, several fire engines rolled through, sirens wailing. Jason was not pleased with the noise!

We spent the rest of the weekend eating too much and enjoying time with family. Justin, Evan and Logan had a great time riding Grandad's four wheeler and other motorized vehicles...

Jason and Sarah also rode the red tractor, but enjoyed Grandad's big orange one even more because it has two seats!

Happy 4th of July!

Mission Impossible

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to get FIVE kids to SMILE and LOOK at the camera at the same time...

Photo A: Sarah sees something amazing in the sky.

Photo B: "We're smiling as HARD as we can, mama!"

Photo C: Jason is the funniest brother Sarah has ever seen!

Photo D: Fifteen shots later and the end of everyone's patience..this is the best photo we got!

We have been wanting to get a professional family picture done for a while now, but it just hasn't happened. So yesterday we found out that we needed a family photo for our six month post placement report (adoption paperwork). After dinner, we made the kids change clothes and herded them out to the backyard (not the most exotic setting, but it was handy!)

Here's the family shot for the report. Surprisingly enough, we only took a few of these and they turned out pretty good. Justin propped up my camera and used the timer, which we have never done before. Maybe the kids were hypnotized by the flashing red light? :)

Dave was going to stand behind the rock, but we had issues with sunlight on the side of his face... so we had to improvise. This photo shows you how tall our boys are now compared to their mama!

Crazy for Cantaloupe!