Happy Birthday Nana!

We celebrated Nana's birthday a couple of weeks ago with dinner at El Paso and birthday cake.  The kids were so excited to give Nana the platter they made at All Fired Up.  It was such a fun night celebrating Nana (and Uncle Harold too)!  We love you Nana!

ChrisStock

Since Bill had elbow surgery and Holden was with Nana and Pop, the girls and I headed to a birthday party for our neighbor Chris Layne (Bill enjoyed the peace and quiet to recover). They own a lake house on Lake Gaston and invited friends to celebrate his birthday and camp on the lake.  We had a blast hanging out with friends, camping, playing in the lake and listening to music.  It was a ton of fun and the girls loved sleeping in our tent with Cora and Uncle Sam.  Here are some photos from ChrisStock:

The kids thought that one of our friend's brought an RV was the coolest thing ever!

Ellie loves Emily Layne

Crazy Ellie with her glow sticks

Glow Stick Craziness Late Night

Neighborhood gals!

Not sure if there were enough people on the dock - it was quite the party!

Our tent is the big one of the left!

Swimming Swimming Swimming

Swim team is almost over and boy have our girls worked hard this summer.  I don't think they have missed a single day of practice unless it was called off for bad weather.  I feel like we live at our pool between practice, swim meets and just hanging out with friends.  Here are some more pictures from this swim season:

Josh and Holden have spent a lot of time together with a babysitter during swim meets!

Relaxing at the pool!

Ellie ready to swim her event!

Madelyn and Lauren

Ellie adores our neighbor and babysitter Beth

Madelyn getting ready to swim breast stroke

Madelyn and Hattie getting ready to swim butterfly.  It was getting pretty late at this point!

Fourth of July

July 4th weekend started off a little rough when Bill tore his the tendon in his elbow while playing golf with our friend Tim Moore.  Bill was such a good sport and continued on with our fun filled weekend like nothing had happened knowing that surgery was probably going to happen the following week.  After Bill visited Ortho on Call, we headed downtown on Friday night to see the fireworks on the James with friends.  The weather was iffy but it turned out to be a great and cool night with just a tiny bit of rain and the downpour did not happen until we were in our car.  On Saturday, we went to the annual Fourth of July party at our pool followed by a HUGE backyard picnic at a friend's house in Church Run.  We then saw more fireworks later that night and then took 2 very exhausted kids home to bed.  We definitely had a awesome weekend with friends!

All ready to head downtown!

Holden had a blast at this first July 4th Pool Party!

More July 4th Games

The relays were a ton of fun - this Team called "The Sharks" was on fire!

Late night fireworks on July 4th - Ellie had a blast playing with Charlotte!

Such a great group of people!