The Elwell's: 4th of July Weekend 2011

Yup, I know the 4th of July was a loooong time ago but here are the pics! We went to my dad's lake cabin up near Bemidji and joined my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins. The weather was great and we had a ton of fun!

Fourth of July Boat Parade: Every year we decorate our boats and join a mini parade around the lake. This is my Grandparent's new pontoon boat that they just got. It's been great since it is easier for my grandpa to get in and go for boat rides now.

My cousin and her little one, one of my other cousins and Little L waving her flag!

Making buns with GiGi! Always an important part of visiting the lake.

Eating the dough is the best part!

Driving Great Grandpa's new pontoon!

Taking Grandpa and Great Grandpa on a "ride"

Daddy caught a big sunfish

Look at that guy!

Since the actual Fourth of July was on Monday this year we weren't sure if we were going to do our fireworks on Sunday night or Monday night. The weather for Monday was looking like a 50-50 chance of thunderstorms so we opted to be on the safe side and shot off all our stuff on Sunday night. We were glad we did since there ended up being a pretty big thunderstorm right around dusk when we normally start lighting our fireworks on Monday night.

As for our fireworks, my cousins always go to the same guy every year and he gives them great deals! We always make a list of all of the names of the fireworks (and seriously...who names those things?) and then using ipads this year (we have come so far from our old pencil and paper routine) we rated them all on a scale of 1-3. We have had varying scales over the years but eventually came down to this simple scale of (bad-ok-great! or 1-2-3!) That way we know what fireworks to get next year.

Since this was Little L's first time seeing fireworks I wasn't sure what to expect but I was pleasently suprised! Other than one incident with our first fountain, she absolutely LOVES them! Her quotes of the night were "Fireworks make me happy!" and "More?!?" :)

Miss A and Little L with their glow stick flags

Little L with my cousin L and all of the fireworks!

Catching her first glimpse of a fire work...she LOVED them!

I LOVE this picture! It totally captures how she felt about the fireworks!

Another one of my favorites!

I just LOVE all the looking up shots! (My parents have one of me from this age and looking at these pics always reminds me of that!)

Below is the first fountain that we lit. We were sitting a little closer than we probably should have been, and the fountain was a little bigger than we thought so in trying to move back quickly I tipped my chair over and Little L got a little concerend and started crying, saying she wanted to go to bed. After we got her calmed down she was back into the fire work action!

Waiting for the next firework to light up the sky!

Watching fire works with Daddy...

and Mommy!

My cousin's daugter A wasn't quite as sure about the fireworks but after awhile she got into them too!

They sure did have fun waving their glow stick flags (seriously worth the dollar from the dollar store!)

My dad snapped this picture of Lydia sleeping with her glow flag after all the fireworks!

When my cousin L and I were little we had our picture taken with another cousin of mine (K) when we were in the 2-3 year age range. We were all wearing matching dresses my grandma had made and sitting together in the hammock. My aunt K decided that it would be fun to reproduce that with our little girls (K is still newly married and hasn't added a little one to the bunch yet so for this version it was just L and my daughters). So my aunt made matching dresses for the girls (she actually finished them up out at the lake) and then we used my dad's hammock to take the picture.

Hammock shot...this hammock is so big it was hard to get the girls in there sitting up!

So cute!

Caribou Coffee had a coupon for the 4th of July that let you get a kiddy drink for free with the purchase of an adult drink. So my cousins and I took Little L and Miss A into town to get "big girl coffee drinks"!

Little L's favorite part is the whip cream of course!

Sportin' momma's glasses!

Playing together in the Caribou kiddy area

On the actual Fourth of July we did some low key firework stuff like snakes, poppers (or snaps depending on who you are talking too!), bottle rockets and firecrackers.

Those are so loud!

Miss A wasn't too sure about the fire crackers...

This is what caused the girl's to cover their ears...it was a long string of firecrackers and once they burned up it lit the top ball on fire which caused it to rain down little exploding sparks...it was quite the show!