Melamine and feats of strength

First the melamine. (I just gave away the ending, but oh well.) By some completely random chance I found this plate online that I L-O-V-E-D. I gasped, I thought it was so beautiful and did not wonder if but when and how many I would buy. One for a shelf, or 2-4 for hanging together on the wall? I bookmarked the page and looked at it every day for nearly a week to remind myself how perfect it is. Then I took the time to read the description and noted it was made of melamine. Hmm, what's that, I wondered. I guess most people already know it's plastic. My heart sank, I was not planning to hang plastic on my wall. Now I'm a little torn, get one anyway for the shelf and maybe it'll look fine...or forget it altogether. I'm not excited about it anymore.

Feats of strength. Here's a fun film of Scott bench pressing Josh. Also an image of where Scott got pelted in the gut with a soccer ball at his indoor league game two nights ago. Ouch.

Walking!

You know who. She's tearing it up all over the place now.

Knock Down Drag Out

A beloved pastime that has been greatly underutilized lately is the Dad vs. Kids wrestling match. It's been so long since a brawl like this that it's probably the first one where Josh really participated. And boy did he participate. Keep your eye on that kid, he's a scrapper.

Happy 4th...when we celebrate our country's independence by blowing up a small piece of it.

We packed up the kids and took them to the compound for some sparkley fun. The Langfords even came along to add to the festivities and combine resources fireworks-wise. I'm so glad they came...I love it when our families intermix.

We wiled away the last couple of hours of daylight with the kids playing outside and lots of ice cream treats and desserts. As the sun set deeper, we got things started. The kids all went nuts with boxes and boxes of those snap-pop things and a few sparklers for each of them. Josh showed little to no fear, which was a surprise...we thought he'd be a little more timid about everything (especially when we got to the louder ones). Ben was right there in the mix with everything. Emma turned out to be the most skittish, she reminded me of me when I was little. I liked fireworks, but I'd just as soon watch from inside and not be so close to everything. Emma was tense at first, sitting a few yards back from the other kids who were as close as we'd let them be while we did various 'fountain' type fireworks in the driveway. Once we moved to the back field for the bigger up in the air variety she was a bit more relaxed. "If you plug your ears it's not so frightening." she commented. It was a perfect little celebration, everyone had fun and the weather couldn't have been more pleasant. Some of this video has a little too much plain black screen to it, but I was trying to get footage of the kids when you could see them by the light of the fireworks (you could see them much better in real life than in the video). I watched them almost as much as the sky, I loved seeing their little heads turned up pointing and watching.

Sheep's Clothing

What cute little cousins. Sweet...innocent...never delving into mischief...always pure intentions...