The 4th of July

One flag, one land,

One heart, one hand,

One nation evermore.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

This year we spent the 4th up at our lake house in Chautauqua with my family.  It started bleak and gray with raindrops dotting the windshield on the drive up, but it turned into a gorgeous day and we enjoyed all of the things the lake has to offer.  

We went for a boat ride, dangled our feet in the water at the end of the dock, ate grilled hamburgers, potato chips and watermelon, roasted marshmellows over a campfire and just enjoyed being together.  It was wonderful!  

The kids had a blast.  There are endless adventures for little boys and one little girl to pursue.  This face says it all...

Our attempt at a picture of all the kids together.  This is the best we could do!

Our boat ride turned to adventure when we were pulled over by the boat police... is that what there called?  Note for the future.  Don't let your kids dangle over the side of the boat with no life jackets and cruise around the lake with an expired registration.  Oops!  Thankfully they were nice guys and just gave us a warning.  And boy did we have some excited little boys to be up close and personal to the flashing lights and the men with guns.  They thought it was pretty cool.

This is Tie Died Toots by the way... don't you love her?

We finished off the evening with a spectacular fireworks display!  The kids were wiped out and remarkably... slept in the next morning.  

The nice thing about the holiday this year was that it fell on a Thursday, which meant a long weekend! The next day we kayaked with the kids.  James accidentally took a dip in the lake when he dangled his feet a little too far over the edge of the dock and thankfully my wonderful brother in law was watching out of the corner of his eye and quickly came to the rescue.  Praise God he was just fine, but this is the stuff of every mothers' nightmare.  I kept a close eye on him the rest of the weekend and vowed we would sign up for swimming lessons as soon as we got home.

My sister and co. departed Friday afternoon and we soaked up a few more boat rides, took the kids to the local beach, ate homemade ice cream and enjoyed beautiful sunsets.

In short, it was a pretty fantastic weekend!