July - 4th of

Celebrating 4of the July at my parents with the usual crew....
and thanks to Mike for his amazing (as always) pictures

Playing nice for the camera only lasted so long before heading out to the pool.
It may be another year, but the pool hijinks are still the same...




On about the 4th run she slipped and bit it hard, landing on her arm. Now this is trauma #2 for the day (the hour.... the span of 10min...) since on our way out to the pool she got bit by a carpenter ant!! Yes, I saw it happen, Rob saw it happen AND I Googled it to make sure we weren't seeing things. They DO bite - or more like pinch. Especially when sandwiched between chubby little 4 year old fingers that are purposefully trying to squish it.

ANY time, ANY place she spots a body of water she BEGS to (repeatedly) show off her newly learned head-under-water-technique. Seriously, the fact that I have yet to find her headfirst in the toilet bowl still shocks me. Impressively, she's not holding her nose, opening her eyes AND breathing properly. Huge kudos to her swim teacher!!!
Then she spends the next 15min blowing water out of her nose and chanting "DID YOU SEE THAT?!? MOMMY!! DID YOU SEE THAT!??! WATCH!!! I'LL DO IT AGAIN! MOMMY! MOM-MY!! WATCH ME, OK? (she makes sure I'm looking) Watch Mommy."

Clutch cousins shot!

Then Ryan did the faux-fall-down...

... which his audience though was simply HYSTERICAL.

That transgressed into the boys doing wrestling take downs while Adrienne did running-jump-head-under-water dives around them.

These next 2 pictures of the boys are just adorable....

Here is take-down-dive #46.... but it didn't go so well. And I caught it all. Frame by painful frame.
Run and........

.... as they went into their take-down, she jumped in. A 3-head-collision.

At this point it finally registered that things didn't go so well & I start running to the pool... but I never took my finger off the camera's shutter button so I captured every wince of pain.

I was sure, SO SURE, there was going to be a broken nose out of this - I kept scanning the water for that tell tale trail of red pluming through murk. But other than Nick getting a lungful of water, there were no casualties.
It was funny - they all looked at each other for a long moment - and you could tell they were sizing each other up: "Is he going to cry?" "Is she going to cry?" - nope. They all sucked it up and went RIGHT BACK to doing the same schenanegins.
*phew* Crisis averted.

Back inside, all dried off, time for dessert and back to the safety of posing for Mike's pictures.

I've been saying it all along.... I don't know how that boy holds up that big noggin all day. Sometimes he just needs to take a little rest....
With Nick donning his Grecian shirt once again we got to perfect the image!
No Greek is complete without a proliferation of chest hair.

But Papou thought something was missing and snatched that eyeliner right out of my hands and took over....

OPA!!

The makeup case comes out and you think the little miss doesn't want in!!? We gave her a Marilyn Monroe.

Sparklers!!

PopPop is showing them one of the great joys about living in hickville..... bottle rockets.

PopPop!! TOO LOUD!!!

*POP*

DO IT AGAIN!!