Lots to Celebrate!

One of our favorite family traditions is going to Fredericktown on the 4th of July.  We have also started celebrating Jake's birthday that day too.  Mom and dad buy all the fireworks and I think dad enjoys that as much as the kids do watching them.  Matt has inherited the responsibility of shooting them off now. Unfortunately Colton wanted no part of the fireworks this year so he had to stay inside with Gretchen. We really are lucky to have these times to be together.  We are also very blessed to have Jake as a part of our family.  Him and Linc are best buds and Jake needs him more than Linc will ever understand.  We have had some tough times with Jake but Gretchen has finally figured it all out by seeing some new Drs.  Jake and been diagnosed with autism so this year was a special celebration for us.  We are all taking the extra steps to understand him and help him along the way. He is doing much better now too that Gretchen is homeschooling him and their next goal is to get him back in school.  He really is a special kid and we love him very much no matter how different he is.  He is perfect in our eyes and the best cousin and friend to Linc.

Lincoln is finally tall enough to reach the pedals on the mule so he took it for a spin.  Daddy went along to help but said he did just fine without him.

This looks like trouble!

Tank races, didnt really go as planned.  A lot of noise and shocked kids.  They were way louder than we thought and the kids were not prepared!

Best Buds!

Setting up!

Mom got all the kids Murphy hats with lights on the bills.

Come on mom, enough with the pictures.

Fine we will look cute!

Ha, Brea's chair fell over.

Dad and Matt borrowed the kids hats.  They worked perfect!

She hated the flash!  This is as good as it gets.

Thats some serious conversation.

I love it when they truly look happy together.

Best annual firework display!

We have the luxury of going to the Bates annual 4th of July party. They put on one heck of a firework display that is synced up to music.  This year Lincoln was really good and was not scared of the noise since he had his ear muffs.  It is also nice to see all the families that Dad works with and Kaylee gets to catch up with a friend from kindergarten.  

Insisted on wearing a cowboy hat!

Flash flooding

Our town was hit with a storm that dropped about 6 inches of water with in an hour.  Our house should have never flooded but it did.  Both of the kids rooms flooded that night.  Kaylee was not home but Lincoln was and when he woke up the next morning and jumped out of bed he was splashed with water.  He came out and told Matt,"my floor is soaking wet and I didn't do anything.  There is no way my drink spilled and made it that wet". Come to find out the front corner of Kaylee's room was too far under the ground by the dirt collecting there.  We took up all the carpet and dried it all out really well. For the outside to prevent it happening again we had to dig out all the dirt and had Jim come down and help us break up some concrete so that we could put a drain in.  Then we had some drywall to fix in Kaylee's room so we decided to paint that to prepare for putting our house on the market.  Of course Lincoln wanted to help paint so we let him since there wasn't any flooring in the room.  He had a blast and was so proud of himself.  Last but not least was the carpet.  The kids had fun sleeping in the living room the night before. Up until that point they had only their beds in their room so I am not sure if they were just excited that we were getting carpet that next day or if it was sleeping in the living room.  The worst part of all of this is that their stuff couldn't be in their rooms.  It was all piled up in our dining room and kitchen area.  Since I work in my dining room everyday the stuff really started to stress me out.  I just wanted my house back. Another part that was really hard is that it put a damper on our summer.  We couldn't really have people over to enjoy our pool with no room in our house for anyone to walk.

After 5 weeks we are finally able to give them back their rooms.