July 4th weekend

Hi! First, I can’t believe it’s already JULY. This summer is going by so fast!! We get so excited for summer to get here and then it just zooms by.

On the Sunday before July 4th, we took the kids to the Natural History Museum here. Such a neat place! The kids were really intrigued by the touch room. 😉

These two just scared us with the stuff they were trying to hold, so we nixed that and found something else fun:

The footprint sand pit! Parker actually tried to make the footprints, Eisley just liked messing everything up. 😉

And we lost Nathan to the microscopes. I don’t think he left that stool the entire time, other than to ask the worker questions about everything. (So did Parker, though, too. He was constantly yelling, “EXCUSE ME, SIR? WHAT KIND OF FROG IS THIS FROG? SIR? SIR, EXCUSE ME?” Goodness.)

I mean, you can’t go to a dinosaur museum and not take pictures by a giant fossil. 😉 Nathan’s reading has come a long way and there were definitely parts of the museum that I was wishing we were back to an illiterate child. 😉 But I feel the same way about certain bumper stickers we pass in the road.

You cannot beat New Mexico sunsets. You just can’t. Jon and I have been getting the little people in bed and sneaking out to the deck to watch the sunset at night and it’s just the best. Life gets insane. It’s so nice to have a few moments together to just sit and talk without a bunch of interruptions.

Parker brought this in one morning and told us it was a bunch of policeman taking the bad guys to broccoli jail. Jon goes, “Too bad they are unarmed.” Buh-dum-chish. 😉

On July 4th, I’d seen these little inflatable pools at Target several times and I finally just bit the bullet and got them. And the kids went NUTS. We set them up at Gammy and Pops’ house and they played for hours in them!

Nathan was a little big for the pirate pool, so I got a much bigger one for him and Parker just jumped back and forth between the pools.

Pirate time from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Jon and Uncle Bryant were in the pools most of the time as well. Love this one – ha! Eisley was trying to be just like Jon and I love how she’s holding his hand! 😉

Aunt Nicole with my two nephews! 😉 Love it!!

We had to bust out the big bow for the 4th of July festivities. 😉

So much fun. The boys went nuts because Bryant let them “help” light the fireworks and then they would run like crazy back to their chairs. Ha! Such a fun Fourth!!!