Mid-Summer days

Lots to catch up on here - the storm, our 12th anniversary, 4th of July.

 We had a fierce storm blow through on Friday June 29th, leaving an astounding number of people in our area without power.  We lost ours for 3 days, and were sad to lose this tree - but very thankful that it didn't damage our car.  We were also very thankful that Dave's parents had power, so we were able to escape the heat and get a good nights sleep.

Dave was away on the ycf retreat in St. Michaels.

We were excited to go over and join them on Sunday morning!  We decided to spend the night there as a family to celebrate our anniversary.  This was the view from the pool deck at the house where we stayed.

 Will face.

 Playing while we waited for pizza at Ava's.

Smelling the goodness.

 Yum.

 This salad was absolutely perfect.

 Some of our YCF friends joined us - we were all grateful for the extra attention ;).

 Our family - 12 years later.

 Enjoying the pool the next morning.

 Andrew finally decided he wanted to swim everywhere without his kick board.

 Ice Cream in St. Michael's on our way out of town.

 Checking out the marina.

 This little old fishing boat was Caden's favorite.

 laughing at daddy.

 My boy's

 A "must" stop - and typical St. Michael's store front.

4TH OF JULY!!

We enjoyed a sweet little parade with friends in a local neighborhood.  This Hummer was the highlight for my  boys (and getting the candy they tossed). 

 Mama's shades.

Picnic lunch and party at the park afterwards.

 Will got to ride the train, while the older boys did the large inflatable slide.  Dave was called away for a hospital visit, but got to join us later for dinner....

and ice cream.

Later that night we let the older kids head over to church to watch the Kenwood Country club fireworks.

 They proved to be too loud for Caden, so we enjoyed them from our car.

 A few days later, a crew from South Carolina arrived to take away our tree (it was a "county" tree).

The boys have loved making "cowboy soup" in the tree stump.  Funniest (and grossest) part of this, was that there was a "special" smell on our street that week from all the food people had to throw away.  A few days later we were walking by a smelly dumpster, and Andrew announced with excitement, "It smells like cowboy soup!"

We've started enjoying flowers from the yard.

Will with his favorite friend.