July 4th at the Lake

I'm so thankful that my kids can experience celebrating July 4th at the lake. I love the family time, the fireworks from the boat, the true feeling of summer, the 'everything is red, white and blue', the yummy food, and of course, celebrating this great country of ours!

This year we were in our first ever boat parade. It was pretty fun, but the water was super rough (could be the fact that is was 4th of July weekend and 90+ degrees so everyone was at the lake). We had the idea of putting my mom's planters full of red geraniums on the front on the pontoon. Parade = success - 1 pot of geraniums. At one point in time during the parade, the front of the pontoon went under water (a bit scary) and we were down one pot. We all watched it sink.

We watched fireworks from the boat again and the kids enjoyed a few fireworks of their own.


Funny how even a sparkler can be a lightsaber if you will it to. It looks like he's holding the broom, but it's in the background...kind of funny.
The first fish Millie ever caught all on her own. She's really been enjoying fishing this summer (last year she mostly used a pretend fish weight and just practiced casting). She was so excited!

My brother loves to fish. Hayden loves to fish. Hayden would fish all day if we let him. This weekend Mark took him out on the pontoon to fish since he's usually just fishing off the dock. That evening he didn't catch a thing, but he still loved it-the mark of a true fisherman.

The next day Mark, Hayden and my brother took Bella to some shallow water to expose her to it. On the way home, they fished off the pontoon. This time, they caught a couple of fish. I love these next two photos because they have almost the same expression and big fish/big guy, little fish/little guy...
Still fishing. I don't know my text has turned green, but I'm very annoyed by it and cannot fix it! Agh!
Another one of Hayden's catches. A huge catfish!Bella warmed up to the water.



We were bribing Conner to try skiing. He's pretty content just to tube and kneeboard. He got up for a bit, but hasn't had the fun experience of just skiing around the lake.
Hayden went from being apprehensive on the kneeboard, just barely trying it, to attempting and almost completing a 360 on it. I was proud of him for trying! .Looking forward to many more!!!!!