Fireworks with California

Jonasen and Ali Jane have been asking about "Papa Dave" a lot lately, and the funny thing is, Papa Dave showed up! My parents best friends live in California but make the trip home still usually once or twice a year to visit family and friends! The Bigs have taken a liking to Papa Dave like we haven't seen with anyone else. And my mom took lots of pictures of them together but they were all actions shots and blurry with the kids running, laughing and playing.

Papa Dave of course came with his lovely wife, "Maronica" (really Veronica...) and it was such fun to see them and to spend some time with them. We had beautiful weather and played a lot in the lake and they happened to come on the weekend of the big fireworks show on my parents lake. Once again, the fireworks didn't disappoint and we all had a great time oooohing and aaaahing over the beautiful sight!

Though my brother is on a motorcycle trip across the country, my beautiful sister-in-law brought Maddy over for another fireworks show. This was her second fireworks show on my folks' lake and she stayed awake for the entire thing. I know that Dave and Veronica also enjoyed seeing Maddy as they have a granddaughter of their own who is Maddy's age and were no doubt missing their little cutie!

We had a lot of laughs on the boat, mainly from our Goose who is quite the talker now and he has added to his vocabulary of 'buckananas' and one of his newest words that has us laughing was when he talked about the 'Guitoes' getting him! ('Guitoes' is Zach for mosquito)

This was Sean's first fireworks show. He stayed awake for most of them but eventually fell asleep and we've decided that the old fireworks that we used to watch (though not as impressive) must have been much louder! (That or my brother was the biggest wimp in the world because I have memories of him up in the house covering his ears because he was afraid of the noise!)

My parents' neighbors also came out on the lake. They pulled their boat next to my parents and we tied them together so their oldest son came to our boat. (That is Dodge in between Ali Jane and Zach.) And our oldest son, Joey, went to their boat to sit with their younger son Davis, who is going into fourth grade.

We laughed at Dodge as he gave Jeff parenting tips (telling him to be careful with Sean when he was holding him) and then telling Zach (our 'pirate') about the real pirates in Somalia... where Somalia was... etc and then asking if something was "really necessary." He has always had quite the vocabulary but it still makes me smile... much like Zach's outfit did when we went back home...