July 4th Fun!!

I am a bit behind in my blog post, but today I am committed to catching up. We had such a great 4th of July weekend up north in Boyne City. Boyne City might be a small town, but they sure do a great job with the 4th. We headed up Friday night and arrived just in time to see the end of Friday night stroll the streets. Every Friday night in downtown Boyne City they have different musicians performing on different street corners or in front of certain shops/restaurants. Since we have a music lover (Ryan) stroll the streets is often a fun activity.

We spent a nice day at the beach with our friends the Belands. Their little boy Jace is 3 1/2 and played very well with Kyle and Ryan. Brady again enjoyed the water and the sand and really mastered the eating of the sand on this trip to the beach.

Brady 11 months

Kyle and Chris with some help from the other boys build a pretty impressive sand castle.

We also had fun at the parade. Don complains every year that it is the longest parade ever. It does get a bit much when the fire trucks from I swear from every county in Northern Michigan come through honking their horns, but really it is a great parade and the boys love it.

Kyle (61/2), Ryan (4), Jace Beland (31/2)

After the parade we headed to bounce house village where they have about 7 difference bounce house inflatables and one that is a water slide. It was a very hot day so Kyle loved that one. Ryan was not to fond of the COLD water so he enjoyed the other inflatables. One was a jousting competition. Kyle some how convinced Ryan to joust him. Though it was an uneven battle Ryan held his own and most importantly the brothers fought nice...I am sure someday soon that is going to change.
So you might be thinking well what about 4th of July fireworks? The 4th of July is not the 4th of July without fireworks, or at least that is the line Kyle kept repeating to us. Well for the past few years we have kept everyone up to watch the fireworks and lets say it is more work then it is worth. So this year we decided to skip them and put kids to bed closer to normal bed time. Well, lets just say Kyle was very sad. So Don and I decided when they started we would wake him up and drive if we had to to the end of the street to see them. Well, when the fireworks started we discovered there was perfect viewing right from my parents back yard. So Don went and scooped Kyle out of bed. I think it took Kyle 5 minutes into the fireworks show to fully wake up. It was a very special thing for just Kyle and he was a very happy boy and he did not rub it in to his brother the next morning so we were very proud of him.