Happy 4th of July!

Well, our Independence Day was spent saying good-bye to the first half staffers who were leaving and greeting the second half staffers who were showing up. In Pine Cove terms, this weekend is called MAWOG (stands for Men and Women of God...if you want to know more about the origin of MAWOG check out this really cool book called Forty! Let's Count 'Em!) It's always a bittersweet time closing out one half but being excited for the half yet to come.

One of the things that made it especially bittersweet for the Lay family was a little switch-a-roo of our nanny. Outback has been operating one female senior counselor short all first half of the summer. Chrismiss is incredibly qualified to fill that role, so in the best interest of camp, she has moved from being our nanny to being a senior counselor. She will do a great job, but she will be missed! Instead of Chrismiss, we now have Deo (short for Deo for my C-Oh...long story, maybe I'll blog about that another time) as our nanny for the second half of the summer. The kids love her and she is oh so sweet! I know we will be blessed to have her in our home.

Part of the MAWOG celebration included a little pool party, our first time in the pool (other than our tiny little yellow baby pool in our back yard) this summer! All 3 kids LOVED it! Tucker splashed like crazy. Landry giggled. And Hank was fearless! He liked to jump off the side to Jeff, but didn't want Jeff to catch him. And he went down the giant slide with his Daddy, too. So fun! We're looking into swim lessons for Hank before the summer ends...he is ready!


There were plenty of willing hands to hold the kiddos in the pool. Here, Guac (short for Unholy Guacamole) is holding Tucker, and Chrismiss is holding Landry

If you know me at all, you know it doensn't take much of a reason to justify going to Sonic. I figured Independence Day wasn't Independence Day without a little (or maybe a Route 44) Vanilla DP. Watch to see what Hank's and Landry's drinks of choice were.



Jeff did get done last night in time to come home for our own little July 4th family celebration. We were going to try to go see the city fireworks demonstration, but it was cancelled because all the firemen were putting out a fire out in the country just outside the city limits (which is still blazing today?!?! Supposedly there are helicopters with buckets of water flying around!). So we went to a fireworks stand and got some sparklers. Always fun!

This is the firework stand where we got our sparklers. (No worries, Jeff was right there with Hank.) Hank kept peeking around the corner and sticking his head in the doorway and saying peek-a-boo at the workers. Such a silly goose...like his Daddy!

I guess I'll end by stating the obvious:
Praise the Lord for allowing us to live in a country where we are free to worship Him! May that freedom continue!!!