Happy Independence!

Through my childhood, we always went camping in the summer and/or took a family vacation. Most of my memories of the 4th of July were spent away from home. I thoroughly enjoyed those experiences and Dan and I decided to make it tradition. Last year Roswell was just born, so this is the first time we've gone camping since moving to Michigan. We realized how much we've missed it. Some friends invited us to join them camping for the holiday weekend.

Our friends, the Smiths (I've blogged about them a number of times) own a huge amount of land (40 or 60 acres-I forget which). They've cleared a number of areas to create nature trails, gardens, and a camping area. They have told us many times that we are welcome to use it whenever we wish. We finally took them up on the offer. We had a fabulous time. We wish we could have stayed longer. I guess we'll be camping again very soon.

The boys enjoyed running around wherever they wanted with no concerns for traffic. Elliott was only really interested in the dirt. He was quite the mess. I guess I should come to expect it with all boys.

The next morning we had to pack up early and head to the Riverfest in Portland, MI. Dan has the privilege of visiting the Portland Branch members every month with his church calling, and therefore signed us up to help them man a booth at their festival, to give information about our faith to passersby who inquired. It was fun. We will get the opportunity to do the same for our own branch in the church-- St. John's Branch at the St. John's Mint Festival this coming August.
There were also many other things to see at the festival. I had the chance to take the boys down to an area that sparked their interest. Bounce houses! And better yet, they were free to go on! I thought the boys would be scared to go on them (as in times past), but I was happily surprised. I could barely contain them in order to take their shoes off.

Donovan and Elliott had fun on the elephant bouncy slide. Roswell wanted to get out of the stroller to play too, but there were too many big kids so I didn't let him. He wasn't happy. :(

Then I saw this huge slide. It must have been at least 15 feet high if not more. I thought for sure the boys wouldn't be interested. Again I was wrong, and it put a smile on my face.

Helping each other climb up. Elliott is such a monkey! I always knew it, but he made it look easy and rarely used the helper squares.

Dono going down.

Elliott going down - on his tummy!

He didn't want to be still enough to let me take a picture.

We ended the day with a bbq at another friend's house. We had quite a busy weekend, but it was lots of fun. Happy Independence Day!