Happy 4th of July!!

 We had a few friends over to light sparklers and celebrate.  Charlee, Marlee, Maddie, Zoey and Colton (Austin is behind Colton and ducked down in the water when I snapped the picture).  We had six kids in the pool and there was plenty of room.  They all showed off their swimming, kicking, and cannon ball skills!  Notice Austin in the picture below swimming along behind Colton.

 After the swimming we lit up the sparklers and let the kids run around the yard.  The solo cups were a great idea to help protect the kids' hands from sparks until Austin comes walking up to Sarah and very calmly says, "Look at mine cup."  His solo cup was on fire and he was still holding on to it!  This caused a bit of a panic for the parents and when we got it off and the fire was out, Austin said, "That cup was hot on mine hand."  So, then we talked about how maybe the solo cups weren't that great of an idea for this group.  We also talked about how if any of the girls' cups started on fire they would have been screaming but Austin was Mr. Calm about the entire thing.  He wanted another sparkler . . . and a new cup!

 Austin and Zoey waiting patiently to have Brian light their sparklers so we could get a picture of them together with their sparklers.  They wouldn't take their eyes off the sparklers to look at the camera . . . cute anyway!

Zoey and Marlee are teaching Austin some dance moves in the picture below!  And what a good sport he is!!!

 Colton was not afraid of looking at the sparklers but he had no interest in holding on to a sparkler.  The below picture is about as close as he would get to holding it.  Charlee was brave enough to hold the sparkler . . . the two of them were very serious about it. 

You can see in the above picture where Colton and Charlee get their seriousness about sparklers from.  This is Brian and Sarah very intensely lighting the sparkler for Charlee and Colton to hold on to.  Good teamwork!  The dads also lit some snakes on the driveway, all the kids thought these were great!  There were lots of oohs and aahs and even clapping when the snakes were lit!  Such a fun holiday!!!  Great time to get together with such great friends!!