4th of July Fun

We love the 4th of July. We have so many wonderful blessings because of where we live and love to celebrate the great country we are a part of. Thanks to all of you who have served or are married to those who have served this great nation.

We spent the first part of the day in Genesee with Grandy and Papa Cole (Pops Carter's side). Every year they have a celebratory parade through the mountains and a small carnivalish party with swimming. This year it was a little overcast so no swimming. As you will see, the boys look forward to decorating their bikes in honor of the occasion. This was a fun memory growing up a Carter and we are excited that we are able to do it with the boys. The boys loved spending time with Pops, Grandy, Papa Cole, Careylyn and Gunner. Below are some pics to show the fun



Shaylynn in her fun outfit. She pretty much slept through the whole thing.


Christian, Gunner, and Dylan showing off the swords the magic balloon man made for them.




Christian's new favorite past time is being unhappy. Here he is in action. They loved the jumping castle. Dylan and Gunner were the wrecking crew and you could see the other parents cringe as they went to work.

Brothers enjoying the fun. Who knows about the faces. I am not sure anymore. Thanks to their Pops for buying them so many fun tickets. This will supply them with $1 toys for the rest of the summer. There is nothing like melted plastic toys in the vacuum. Such a great smell.


Here are the boys in front of the fire truck that headed up the bike parade. They had a blast riding with the other kids and assortment of emergency vehicles.


Here are the boys in formation prior to the start of the parade. Christian and Dylan decorated their own bikes and had so much fun. Gunner was assisted by his Grandy (background) to make sure no other boy was the belle of the ball. For most of us that makes sense. If I was on the ball I would have taken them up to Grandy's house earlier and they would still be picking tinsel out of the spokes. Their is no shortage of patriotism at the Cole's residence. Thanks also for the great barbeque afterwords. We enjoyed Papa Cole's ribs and Grandy's baked beans. Delicious!!!






Comments

Emily said…
That looks like so much fun! What a great tradition!
Love Emily
July 12, 2009 at 12:57 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Camping with the Boys 07/09

Image
This whole summer I (Dad) have promised to take the boys camping. Well, now that summer is past the half way point, sister Shaylynn has been born and the boys have been reminding me lately of my camping promise. On Saturday I decided it was as good a time as any. What a great little getaway. With the last couple of weeks being so busy and full, the overnighter was just what we needed to create a lasting memory. We headed about an hour southwest of Denver to Pike National Forest and ended up driving on some dirt roads, looking for "Rascally Bears" and hiking all over. This is one of my favorite pictures. It captures both boys perfectly. Dylan was cautiously keeping Christian from the edge and Christian was purposely closing his eyes because he didn't want to be in the picture. We love both of them so much. Here are the boys "ghosting". Not sure what it means. Christian kept saying the night was "ghost" and they loved running around with headla...
Read more

Beautiful Life

Life is so good but also so hard.  Is it just me, or do we as women automatically place unrealistic expectations on ourselves?  I know I do.  And it's very difficult to escape those expectations once they've become our "standard" of who we think we should be.  At what point do we say enough is enough, I'm just fine being my imperfect self.  Because really, none of us are perfect.  I wake up every morning at 6am and begin my morning exercising.  I love the feeling of being physically strong and one of my favorite things to do is to get outside and run.  Call me crazy but I actually enjoy training for marathons.  I have one coming up in October and I'm super excited about it.  I'm so glad that I discovered my love for running and it has helped me in so many ways.  I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to my Heavenly Father for my healthy body that allows me to run and keep up with my five children.  But everyday I have ...
Read more

Motorcycle fun with the kids...

Image
We were finally able to get out as a family and ride motorcycles this past weekend.  A big thanks to Leif and Jacove for letting us come up to their property in the mountains and use the homemade track.  Between the 3 families, there were a whole bunch of kids cruising around having fun.  Even Natali jumped on the boys XR70 and cruised around.  She stopped long enough for a quick pose and was off again.  Generally we wear more than flip flops, at least helmets, but the picture is better this way. Dylan started riding the little XR70 last year and was very, very, very cautious.  In fact, I was pretty sure we were going to show up and the other kids might be a little intimidating.  It took him a couple of warm up laps and he was ready to go.  I taped one of his first laps, and lets just say this is night and day progress from last year.  His bike was beginning to think it only had 1st gear.  He was regularly in the higher 2 gears and ha...
Read more