Happy 4th of July!

This morning in the mad rush to get things done before shipping Christian off to Texas for 6 weeks, I remembered that we always take a 4th of July picture! And we hadn't yet! And I had no coordinating outfits or anything!

Everyone had vetoed the traditional Old Navy $5 shirts so I was going to get more original, and I did find the babies festive outfits, but then kinda forgot about the rest of us.
Oopsie.

Last year I even sent Happy 4th of July cards! And this year... not so much.

So I asked Matt if it would be too crazy (amidst the chaos of getting everyone ready to go, them to church, Chris and I to the airport) to get a few pictures of the 6 of us.

He (surprisingly!) said he thought it would be okay and we all set out to the porch for our annual photo shoot.

Then Lexi started wailing.

And yellow ooze was running down her leg.

Coming from Frankie's diaper.

In all my years of diaper changing, I've only seen a few blowouts that bad. Not to be too graphic (and I'm not graphic at all by including a picture!), but it looked like someone poured a cup of goo down her front and the diaper cupped most of it in.

And it was everywhere.

All over Lex.

All over Frankie.

Even all over the ground of the porch.

After a quick change on the front lawn we decided we only had time for some quick self portraits.

Yup, I'm such an awesome planner lately.

Can you tell Addie doesn't like to have her picture taken lately?!

It's always an adventure taking pictures like this! You never quite know what your gonna get!

Anyways.

Yesterday Alexis and Christian got home from girls camp and Boy Scout camp, respectively.

They were tired and dirty.

They both said there was lots of drama.

But they both had an awesome time.

I'm so thankful for wonderful leaders that sacrifice soooo much time to make these incredible experiences for my kids!

Matt and I had lots of fun things we could have done yesterday but we weren't quite sure when the kids would be home, what the traffic would be like, etc, etc. We had plan a, b, and c and then for each of those we had sub plans.

That can get pretty complicated. In the end we ended up going to my sweet friend Mindy's house with another family to swim and shoot some fireworks.

And after all the stress of trying to plan something fun, prepare some good food, all of our sub plans, and debating, it all just came together.

And I realized (again!) that when I try to do too much I only stress myself out, make myself not have fun, and often, because of my bad mood, make my family not have fun either.

Gotta work on that.

Thankfully I realized that fact, said a quick prayer that I could "lighten my load" (love you mom and dad!) and I did just that. And we all had a blast.

Of course I didn't get my camera out till we were cleaning everything up.
I thought this picture of Alexis and Gabby just screams Summer!

And this was not 5 minutes after I took her swim suit off and put on a fresh dress and pull-up.
Gotta love it!

Tonight we're back to plans a, b, and c.

This time I'm gonna let the cards fall where they will and enjoy my family, enjoy my friends, and enjoy the 4th!

Hope you do too!