Happy 4th of July!

We LOVE the time around the 4th of July--but for me, the 4th of July holiday always starts with the 10 days or so before when STRAWBERRY PICKING starts. This year, I got to go picking 2 different times and had literally mountains of strawberries to clean. I love meeting the people who pick around me, hearing their stories of how long they've been picking, who they are picking for etc. I loved telling these people that I have 6 strawberry monsters in my house--we REALLY do eat a lot of strawberries! In the above picture, you can see the beautiful berries and the littlest strawberry monster.

But back to the 4th of July....It has become a tradition to travel to Freeport, IL where Andy's family lives to celebrate the 4th. Andy LOVES fireworks, just as much as I love strawberry picking. Each year, he takes birthday money as well as his fireworks budget and goes to his favorite fireworks "stores". He comes home with bags filled with the stuff and we trek to IL where Andy and his brothers plan their fireworks show.

This year, we went to IL a little early and Glynn boys and Andy's Dad went to Great America for the day. The girls and Colin stayed back with Grandma and had lots of fun. One of the huge highlights for the girls was going to the fabric store and picking out material for a pillowcase and for American Girl jammies. Grandma let the girls participate in the sewing project as much as they could and they just loved it.

In the above picture, you'll see a snippet of Ellie's weekend--the lower left photo is of her catching one of the hundreds of tootsie rolls that were thrown during the 4th of July parade (in the rain!).

Jayna had a great weekend as well--she learned how to dive into Grandma and Grandpa's pool--from the side and the board! She, too, enjoyed the parade--I jokingly say we now have a year's worth of candy--we got THAT much from our 3 girls collecting candy!

And Ava....Most of the time that our camera was out, she was napping! She was exhausted during this trip, but for good reasons! She got to stay up late to do "night swim" and watch the fireworks and the girls were up with the sun (litereally), not being used to sleeping in a room where there are not room darkening shades! She was so excited to pick out fabric for her pillowcase and she swam, swam, and swam some more. One of her favorite things to do was hold hands with someone and jump into the pool yelling "Kawabunga!" The bottom left photo shows Jayna, Grandma, Rebekah, Ellie and Ava all "Kawabunga-ing" into the pool together!

Let's just say that Rebekah has some strong shoulders! Both Ellie and Jayna were balancing on Rebekah's shoulders during the visit--they loved it!

Little Colin....is very smiley in these pictures! But, his smiles didn't last all day and night during our trip. Colin is still working on his 1 yr molars and boy, did mom and dad suffer with sleep deprivation because of it! But he did manage to have times of enjoyment--he LOVED the pool time and if you click on the collage, you get an idea of how the girls "fixed" his hair when he was in the water!

Finally, Colin loved playing with Uncle Ben and Uncle Jimmy. And likewise, Ben and Jimmy would rally for their turn to hold him and play with him. Ben even went so far as to tell me that WHEN Colin woke up in the middle of the night crying, to come wake HIM up! Ben did make the 'mistake' of sharing a sweet treat with Colin...it quickly became Colin's treat! Andy did warn him "You'll be sorry...."! And Jimmy enjoyed holding Colin for the parade--sweatshirt and all, for the 4th of July parade!