Princess Birthday Swim Party

This year the Princess decided to have a swim party and since there were so many pictures taken, I'm just going to insert slideshows. The party started in the afternoon with swimming, of course.

The pool pictures are from both before and after the cake and presents. After an hour of swimming everyone got out of the pool, and after drying for a bit, all took seats at the tables in the studio. First there was cake and ice cream. It was questionable as to whether 12 candles would fit on such a small cake, but she got them all on there. The Princess was certainly ready to blow the candles out when the birthday song was over.

After cake & ice cream is was time to open presents...

The last slideshow has pictures of hotdogs grilled at the firepit, miscellaneous shots and picture after dark when the the movie was showing on the big screen and the glow sticks had been handed out.

The only bad part of the party was the mosquitos. Other than that, everyone had a wonderful time.

Happy Birthday, Princess!

4th of July

I've been so busy and spending so much time out in the yard and garden that I haven't had time to update my blog. We didn't have as large a gathering as we have in the past for the 4th but we totally enjoyed those that were able to be here. The weekend of the 4th was a rainy weekend, but not a stormy one. The rain was bearable without the wind and craziness. We set up the tables in the studio for games and eating...
Two long tables lengthwise out from one wall...

...one long table lengthwise for the food and the third table out lengthwise to the center for use as needed.

The ladder, above, was so the older kids could climb up into the loft to free up more room below.

Below is how you get a fire started with wet wood. You just need a good bellow to get a hot fire.

The rain stopped just in time for the kids to start lighting their fireworks.

The big kids were ready to voluntarily get wet.

Also notice in the picture below the large white area above the pool. That's the screen for the movies.

Here's a shot of the yard. You can see the barbecue grills under the canopy.

The pool is new this year, the one we had for 5 years finally bit the dust. The new pool is much larger and came with a volleyball net and ball which the kids soon put to use.

A lot of energy was exerted having fun.

Then darkness fell and the light show began. This was on the street and went on for quite some time.

The city fireworks was shot off the night before for the school's 100 year celebration that was going on. It was still raining off and on and I didn't take my camera outside because of it.

Members of our family had bought some nice fireworks...

...and there were other families in the neighborhood shooting theirs off, too.

I like this silhouette shot.

The person in town that shot off the city fireworks had a few of the same to shoot off for the 4th. There was a whole series of ones like the one below....

...with one like this between...

...another like this.

The rain was really a blessing because it hadn't rained in a while and things were rather dry, easily burned. So the rain made for a very safe 4th. We all had a wonderful time, missed those that were elsewhere but felt their presence.

Rainy Days & Sundays

We've had rain for the past two days, so I haven't done much of anything outside. My grass is really needing mowed but not till it dries out. I was driving home from downtown on Saturday and a bird landing on a telephone pole caught my attention. It is a hawk/kite of some sort and I thought it might be the same one that I had photographed earlier but I'm not so sure. This one appears to have a light colored head with a dark body and the other seems to have a dark colored head. The under body of the other one is light colored but I can't tell what it's back looks like.
Sunday my daughter and her husband brought over a truckload of lumber to burn in my fire pit. This was the remains of what once was K-Monster's fort/clubhouse and it was getting to be a hazard.

All the in-town grandkids came over to swim and eat icees.

The fire got hot enough the the sil had to find a long board to move things around with.

Below is what the fire pit looks like after two days of rain. Amazing that the full truckload burned down to nothing. You can see how intense the heat had been by the yellow grass all around the pit. I shouldn't have to worry about taking the weed eater to that for a while.

Took some pictures of the flowers that have bloomed around my garden. Only two large ones.

A pink zinnia...

Is this a giant marigold?

The same two from the other side....

The tomato plants are loaded but still not ripe.

Pumpkin is still looking good, but all the other vines are dying around it.

Just a lazy rainy day today. All the kids went back to school last Thursday. Need to figure out when to have the last swim of the season and get the pool drained.

Independence Day 2009!

July 4th is when the family gathers at my house.

The grandchildren make full use of the pool, keeping cool on the hot July days.
My son-in-law is our grill chef and this year they had a new grill to use with our grill that we got last year.

Friday night we had rain. It started out nice and gentle. It came and went, came and went. Later it came down heavier and around 4:30 or 5am my campers all came inside to sleep. The tent below caved. These tents are just NOT designed to deal with anything but nice weather.

My handyman son and I had stayed up cleaning up the studio and making it ready to use, but the campers didn't know this. Here you can see that we later set up a table and chairs and the grandchildren ate their breakfast in the studio. They were really enjoying the shade in the backyard too.

Time for fireworks and getting them all sorted and divided out. See the large red package in the center of the table? That's 4,000 firecrackers in 4 bundles. These were set off all at the same time, 4 people lighting one each of the bundles. I was in the house when this was done and it sounded like it went on forever.

When I went outside the street was cover with what looked to be little pieces of red tissue paper. Click on the picture below and look at the street. This is what it looked like for at least a block.

The sil got out on the street with a broom and cleaned this all up before it had a chance to blow anywhere. This picture may look a bit blurry because I was experimenting with the settings on my camera. This picture was taken after sundown without a flash. I was trying to remember the settings for taking pictures of fireworks.

I am attempting to put the slide show for my fireworks in this post. If the slide show doesn't work I may have to post it by itself.

Slide Show Removed and posted individually on July 7

After the fireworks the big "boys" got down to the games on the side of the house. I sat back at the firepit and help the grandkids make s'mores.

Here's a flash photo of the outside theater from behind the firewood pile.

We had a wonderful 4th of July, even with the rain interrupting out sleep.

City Fireworks

The small town where I live doesn't do 4th of July fireworks because usually a week later they hold their city celebration. This used to be the harvest festival, but I'm not really sure how tightly this is tied to the harvest in this day and age. Where they fire the fireworks from is diagonally across the county road from our house. If anything, we're too close. Much of the time the fireworks were going off directly over my head. The evening was cool if not a bit chilly, so I lit a fire in the fire pit and set up my camera to take pictures...

I took 84 pictures in all, these were some of the best. I hope you enjoyed looking at them.