The Adventures of the Johnson Clan: 4th of July Weekend!!

The 4th of July is by far my FAVORITE holiday. It's all the joy and excitement, love and togetherness, and a good amount of importance that Christmas has, BUT it's in the summer (my favorite season) where you can go out and be active as possible! And this year we were

DEFINITELY busy and active for DAYS on END!

Thursday we had our best trip to the diamonds yet. There were so many kids, and even some of the parents got out there, which made the kids have that much more fun :) Afterwards my car full of kiddos convinced me to take them for ice cream before coming back to the house where they played the afternoon away. My favorite part was that they all played a boardgames together for over an hour without any arguments, boredoms, or distractions... meanwhile the girls were napping and my house became sparkling clean. And soon as those friends went home we received an invite to water games and a pizza dinner, so we quickly left to that activity. And as we were leaving, exhausted and ready for bed after all the fun, the boys received ANOTHER invite to run to the top of the culdasac for a game of kickball... so off they went to do that until it was too dark.

My favorite line this week came from Aaron when he said, "There's nothing better than baseball and fireworks." All week our games would go later into the evenings and people began to shoot off fireworks; it was like being in the sandlot.

Friday Travis and I went mountain biking and I had my most EpIc CrAsH... so mad at myself... and I'm now pretty bruised up all over! But i'm fine and unbroken! We then spent the entire morning at the sandbar around the lake with some friends. The kids had a blast taking out the paddle boards, and the older girls were also so good to take my little girls out to play as well. That night we hosted a bbq for our friends from church. The adults and older kids played volleyball, the littles were mostly on the trampoline, and the inebetweeners gathered every nerf gun we own and had a battle up and down our street.

Saturday was Ultimate Frisbee morning!!!! My FAVORITE!! I'd never played before moving here and now the few times a year we get together to play are my favorite days of the year. We hired a neighbor girl of ours to come to the park and play with the girls so Travis and I could both play the whole time and I'm so glad we did. It was CRAZY hot and humid so we didn't get to play as long, but in that time I burned 750 calories and had a blast.

That evening our neighborhood had a fourth of July dinner, the missionaries even came (we have 4 currently), we played dodgeball until it was too dark and Travis made the comment, "The 4th of July, the one night a year we could play late into the dark because of all the fireworks." That's also a line from Sandlot, and I love it.

When we finally did wrap up our games to do our own fireworks there was a thick layer of smoke in all the yards that looked just like a thick fog. There were firework popping around us and Travis and I wondered if it at all compared to a scene straight from the civil war.

Fireworks were cool, and extended much longer since there were multiple families combining them together, and we came home POOPED!! The boys made it to bed around 11:00, and Travis and I stayed up until 1:00 and 2:00 am prepping the house for Aaron's birthday!

Aaron's 7th Birthday!!!!!!

This is the worlds most imaginative and happy little kid! He LOVES nothing more than to be with people and puppies. He wants to be with someone 90% of the day. Oddly enough, if the group of kids is too large, he just wants to play alone, not in a sulky way, but just because I don't think he likes all the chaos that a group of children can bring.

He has so much love in his heart to give and share with the world. His primary instincts are to please others, and he has a most selfless nature. That being said, for the past several months he's been in a awful stage that seems to go against all his natural instincts and turned him into a little monster. He seems to be leveling back out some! whoo! Growing can be hard... on everyone!

This year Aaron wanted a Star wars birthday, and he wanted to make his own cake. In the end he settled on sugar cookies since we have a set of star wars cookie cutters, and then he wanted to decorate most of them himself.

In the morning, Travis and I slept in due to our late night, and Maddix took it upon himself to see that Aaron got breakfast in bed. Without any prompting he cooked Aaron an egg, made him toast, poured a glass of juice, and served it to him on a tray!!!!!

Do I not have the best kids, every?!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SQUEAKY!

Your family loves you VERY much!!!!!!!!