It sure was fun to get together over the fourth of July with the family. We took a lot of pictures, and I was going to create a video of our experience. However, something went wrong with the video and I could never get it to work quite right. In the end I gave up and never posted anything about the get-together. Now I am trying to catch up and record the fun event that we had together over the Fourth of July.
Our family got up to Arbon Friday morning. Jen, Dave, and Chloe followed shortly thereafter. Everyone else was already there. However, due to some last-minute swather part runs not everyone was together until later in the day.Mom and dad had set out one of the new cattle troughs and filled it full of water. Janae and Mom had also prepared nearly 100 water balloons for later in the day. We put them in the new swimming pool to keep them safe. Uncle Dave and the rest of the kids did not waste any time in donning their swimsuits and jumping into the cold Arbon water. They had a great time playing around splashing each other in the trough.
Later in the afternoon, we all got out some towels and used up the water balloons that Mom and Janae set out. Nearly everyone got involved in the water balloon volleyball game. It was a lot of fun for the biggest adult to the smallest child. Chloe didn't quite get the game, however. Her favorite thing was to go over to the silver bowls containing the water balloons and pick up a water balloon and drop it on the ground to watch it splash.
Of course, including dad in the games meant that the volleyball exercise would end up in a terrific water fight. Everyone got fairly soaked. Poor Alayna was traumatized for a while. Any time grandpa would walk toward the swimming pool Alayna would start screaming and running for the House. She would sure that grandpa was going to dump her in the water, or at least threw a bucket of water on her.
We were also celebrating Joseph's graduation from college this weekend. So we watched a movie that Aylee compiled of Joe. It was really good.
Both Joseph and Dave brought out their Xbox games. Joe also brought out his flat-panel TV. They hooked up the games together on a network and used both of the TVs so that they could get a large group of people playing the Xbox together. This was a big hit, especially with my two older kids. Aylee and Johnathan thought it was the neatest thing.
We didn't have enough room in the house for all of us. So, Jen and Dave and Amber and I set up our tents on the lawn. The kids were pretty excited at the prospect of sleeping out under the stars.
We ended the evening by having a weenie roast by the campfire in the fire pit. Jake got out his guitar and played some songs for us. Amber and Jake led us in "Country Roads".
Camping out was pretty good. There was a time that Jace started screaming. About the time that he stopped, however, it had woken Chloe up and so she started to scream. She would just get settled down, when Jace would start up again. They took turns screaming through the night for about five minutes. Amber and I were laughing our heads off in the tent. Finally, we decided that it might be better if Jace were separated from everyone else. I took Jace into the van, and there we slept for the remainder of the night.On Saturday I took Aylee and Johnathan to go and shoot some BB guns. I had printed out some paper targets and brought along some BBs. We use dad's air pump BB gun rifle. They both did really well. Johnathan hit the bull's-eye right on. However, Aylee was more precise and her shooting as most of her shots were within a silver dollars distance from each other.
Playing with the BB guns got us excited to get busy with the paintball guns that Jake had purchased a few years ago. Jake and Joe spent all morning cleaning up the guns. Shantell, Jake, Joe, and I got everything set up and went to play a game together. However after the first five minutes, we notice that nearly every one of our guns could only shoot the paintballs just a few feet. We finally had to give up and call it a day on the paint ball match.
Joe had brought out a cool ice cream making device. He and the kids got together and makes the ice cream ingredients. The contraption was a blue hard plastic ball. The ice cream ingredients went in a small container and the ball. Outside of the container contained the salt and the ice mixture. Once they got it mixed up, the kids took turns playing some games with the ball outside to mix it up. Amber set up an obstacle course for them to push it for about 30 feet run around the tent and push it back. Once they got tired of that game, we decided that it still needed to be mixed. So, we put the ball in the swimming pool. The kids got on their swimsuits and pushed the ball around and swimming pool.Just before we left, we had a little birthday party for Johnathan who would be turning eight two days later. He got some great scout paraphernalia from the family. He was very excited about that. He also got some Legos and a very neat erector set. We topped off his rice crispy treats cake with the ice cream that Joe had helped the kids make. Janae that Jace his very first spoonful of ice cream. He wasn't too sure about it at the beginning, however he seemed to get a taste for it later on.
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