Our Anniversary and the Fourth of July

Now that I've finally finished blogging about June -- mid-July -- I decided I'd better go back and look through old July photos and see what I should write about before my end-of-the-month July post turns into a monster. But have no fear, there are actually very few photos. This month has flown by!

Ben and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary on July 1st. We didn't go on a date. We didn't exchange presents. In fact, I spent most my day recovering from dealing with a puke baby the day before. I did try to make a big deal out of it with our kids. I told them today was our family birthday. So of course, they wanted cake and ice cream but I was too busy sanitizing our house and checking either of them for signs of illness. Once we'd been vomit free for two days we started celebrating (I think her sickies might have just been a side affect of her 18 month immunizations -- or she may have drank too much kiddie pool water when we played outside, who really knows).  

We put five candles on our cake (one for each of us) and even sang "Happy Birthday Dear Family." The kids loved it. I'm going to have to try and make this a tradition for us. After that we watched Zootopia via redbox. It was a pretty fun family evening, and like most our birthday parties, it didn't really matter that it was a day late.

On our Nation's Birthday we headed to the beach on the lake just north of us. Oshkosh (or Town of Algoma, rather) has no public beach on Lake Butte de Morts and it kind of drives me crazy. We are less than half a mile from this gorgeous body of water and there is no public access! Grrrr. Instead we have to either go across the city to the icky Lake Winnebago beach or head North to another town and enjoy Lake Winneconne (yes, we have three large bodies of water within a ten mile raidus of our house -- welcome to the Midwest). 

So anyway, we drove up to Winneconne and enjoyed a picnic in the park (and on the beach) with all our Church friends (who were able to come). The kids were in heaven and played in the water and on the beach for more than two hours. 

It definitely wore them out.

After a little nap at home, Ben woke Reid up and took him to the fireworks in another small town on the edge of our ward's Southern boundary (Winneconne is the most Northern part of our ward). Public Service Announcement: small towns celebrate the 4th of July best. That's why, even though we live in a city with some 70,000 people, we drive about 60 miles round trip to various small town festivities to celebrate our 4th of July.

Reid and Ben both had a lot of fun at the Ripon fireworks. Reid was telling Nell and I all about them the next day. He thought the 4th of July was a pretty special holiday, and I'd have to agree with him. God Bless the USA!