4th of July, Ben's birthday

We enjoyed a quiet 4th of July at home this year. Bryce had a nice 4 day weekend, so that was nice. Of course we ended up with too many fireworks to light on just one night, but we didn't go as overboard as we have in the past. And this year, Chris and Daniel actually stayed out and watched them instead of running into the house and sometimes peeking out the front window. Daniel did go run inside after I mentioned that they had been actually staying out, but I don't think he was actually scared. And Abby loved the fireworks and wanted to see more.

Here are some pictures from our nights. Since Abby put our camera in the toilet, I've been having to take everything with my phone. Luckily, the phone is a 5.0 megapixel camera too.










And if you've seen any of my posts on facebook, you've heard about Daniel breaking his right big toe (or great toe, as all the doctors and nurses called it) by dropping a big rock on it 2 minutes after I told him to stop playing with the rocks. He was upset when he saw the cut on his toe and kept yelling, "It's broken! It's broken!" But after he calmed down, he was pretty good about it and even entertained all the doctors and nurses to the point where they all said they wanted to keep him there all night. And as we were leaving the ER( we had gone to a Quick Care place where they took the x-ray first, then sent us to the ER where they'd be better equipped to be able to deal with an open fracture, even though the fracture was an in-place fracture and the cut on his toe was caused by the rock, not by the break), Daniel was very cute and kept telling everyone he saw, "Thanks for fixing my toe!" And if you missed the pictures on facebook, here they are again:





And Ben celebrated his 8th birthday this month. Since it's an even-numbered birthday, he got to have a friend party and decided he wanted to go bowling. The problem with birthday parties in the summer is the large number of kids invited who were going out of town that weekend, so didn't get to go. He still ended up with 3 friends plus his family there, so it was fun. He even got a bowling pin from the bowling alley at his party, which was pretty cool.








And Alex lost his second tooth recently, which wasn't the one we thought would come out second, but he was still pretty excited to get another visit from the tooth fairy.