4th of July Weekend

Aside from the Christmas season, the 4th of July is, for me, the hardest time of year to be away from family. We miss out on the city parade (in which we have to reserve seats for days in advance, it is THAT good), the city-wide water fight that the parade turns in to at the end (one of the most fun things I do all year. seriously), eating with family all day (and visiting is mixed in there too), and having dinner on the lawn by the high school waiting for the firework show to start. It is always one of the highlights of my year. Because we’ve been gone for the last few years from these super family fun filled festivities, we usually have just done a low-key thing for the 4th.  This year, however, we changed it up a bit :)
The weekend before the 4th, it was beautiful sunny warm weather—something I have only dreamt about since moving to WA. We headed out to a sandy beach near Seattle and spent some time out in the warm weather:

We ate some snacks in the cool shade

I was happy to be out of the rain and in the sun:
And aside from the handsome man (and cute little boy that is about ready to eat a leaf) in this picture, you can see that this beach could almost be located in sunny and warm California where the sun shines more than 6 times during the summer:
And apparently I don’t find it necessary to put pants on my children. It was a really warm day….really.
 
We also took the boys wading in the Puget Sound


As for the 4th of July, thanks to our fabulous friends, Katie and Randy, we were actually able to do something fun and new this year! They invited us to spend the 4th with Katie’s family who happens to live not so far from where we are living. Devin was able to go crabbing with Randy while I got to go hang out with Katie at her Grandpa’s house…in the forest…on a lake…a beautiful non-motorized-where-I-would-like-to-one-day-have-my-own-house lake. I wish I would have taken pictures of it all. Think of a house surrounded by trees and behind this house a huge grassy lawn leading down to the waters edge where there’s a dock with a slide and diving board. Anyways, I could go on and on about how great and fun it was to spend my day here.  The boys had a blast exploring everything and visiting with everyone and anyone that would pay attention to them. Thanks, Katie, for letting me tag along and for helping me with the boys while Dev was away! And thanks, Randy, for babysitting Devin for me!
Aside from the cute festive little boy in this pic, you can also sort of see the lake

Katie and Cameron

He looks a like he is hatching a mischievous plan:

And here the boys are modeling their 4th of July outfits that were sent to them by Grandma Farr:

They went swimming the lake. Nathan loved being in the water and took a couple of plunges into deeper water. Cameron was content to sit on the shore and eat the pebbles:





Here’s a portion of the (60!!) crab that was caught:

And Devin enjoying it:


They had a bunch of fireworks to light off over the lake but we had to head home to put the boys to sleep. When we got home, we did a few fireworks with Nate and Cam but I think they were too tired to care. When a crackly/sparkly one went off, they gave a look of mild concern but mostly just annoyance that we were keeping them up way past their bedtime.