Happy 4th of July!

Austin, Hadley and I don't get to spend a lot of time together, particularly entire days, so we decided not to invite anyone over today, so that we could do just that.  We spent the entire day together and it was awesome! 

Hadley spent some time playing on her new swing set...

...and then we got in the lake to splash around.

Daddy and Hadley had a great time splashing, floating and blowing bubbles!

After swimming, Hadley played in her sandbox for a little while.  We pretty much did almost everything fun around our house today, and it was great! 

She was cracking us up because she wouldn't sit in the sand.  She acted like it was icky and she didn't want to get dirty.  She kept heading over to the lake to wash off her hands. 

We just happened to be in the house when my mom called.  She was driving by on her way home from Ohio, where she spent the holiday weekend with my great uncle Billy.  She asked what we were doing, and we told her we were just about to go for a boat ride and asked her to join us.  Hadley had a great time sitting at the front of the boat with Grandma! 

We spent the remainder of the evening watching more firework shows and then called it a day.  This was a great holiday weekend.  What an amazing husband and daughter I have been blessed with, and I love spending time with them!  

Happy Independence Day! 

Pre-Independance Day Celebration

Of course we did more boating today, because that's what you do when you live on the lake.  We got up this morning and went to Maria's House of Pancakes for a pancake breakfast and then headed out on the pontoon boat to catch some sun and swim.  Austin's parents and Aunt Shelby were coming over later, so we enjoyed the day until they arrived.

Little Miss Hadley likes to drive the boat...all by herself.  She gets mad if you touch the steering wheel.  I think she just likes things with engines in general.  She's infatuated with the corvette, and loves to pretend drive the G6.  In fact, the other day I put her in the car with the windows down so I could run inside for a minute, and she yelled at me as I walked away and said, with her hand out, "keys?"  Nice try peanut!

This is the sign to our lake as you head out to the other connecting lakes.  Each lake has it's own sign which is pretty nice.

Our little dare devil.  I don't like it when she does this, but I took a picture of her hanging over the boat anyways because she looked so stinkin' cute!

The Dog & Brat Boat, held by the Barbee Lakes Property Owner's Association, was in the channel leading to Big Barbee lake this year.  Proceeds go toward the lake invasive weed treatments.  We didn't stop to buy any dogs or brats, however we do plan to donate to the association to show our support. 

Me and my little love bug enjoying the boat.

Uncle Zeb taught Hadley how to do the monkey face.  Now anytime you say monkey, this is what she does.  I love her little monkey face!

More Dog and Brat Boat pictures as we headed back through the channel and under the bridge to go swimming.  It looks like they had a steady stream of customers!

The Barbee Landing is the only dockside restaurant on our chain of lakes.  The appearance is a little questionable, but the food tastes good.  We wish we had a nicer restaurant that we could boat to for dinner, like The Anchor Room on Wawasee.  Oh well!

The leftover lifejackets from our adventures in the perfect storm last night.

Ahh...finally swimming!  We took the boat over to Irish to anchor down and swim.  Irish seems to be our go to lake for swimming lately.  After I took these few pictures, I got a raft and floated peacefully in the water.  It was glorious!

After swimming for a little bit, we all got hungry so we headed back to the house to get some lunch.  When we got there, we had company sitting in the chairs in the yard: Kenny, Aaron and Angie.  We felt bad when they said that they had been there for about an hour waiting on us.  Whoops!  Austin fired up the grill and we got the cornhole boards out to play a few games.  Shortly after, Austin's parents arrived with Aunt Shelby and we all hung out for the remainder of the evening.

There were fireworks again tonight.  We could see them from about four different locations from our yard.  They were the giant ones, yet again, that lit up the sky.  There is definitely no need to leave the house on and around the 4th of July because we get tons of firework shows from our backyard!   

The Perfect Storm

Today started out with beautiful weather, just perfect for our fun day planned with friends and family on the lake.  We had our good friends Jake and Micki over with their niece Peja, Elias, Lex and the kids, Zeb, Aaron and Angie.  When everyone got to the house, we sat around outside enjoying the weather, until we decided to boat over to Irish lake to anchor down and swim.  When we got everyone loaded on the boat, it had trouble starting...the first time all year.  We sat at the pier for a few minutes and then it started right up.  Even though the sky was looking a little dark in the distance, we decided to head out, which would prove to be a huge mistake.  We only got to swim on Irish for a few minutes before Austin saw lightening in the sky and ordered us all in.  There were still lots of boats on the lake so everything seemed okay, despite the darkening sky, except that the boat wouldn't start.  As we sat there waiting on it to "rest", the sky got darker and darker, soon the waves were white capping and slamming the boat around pretty violently.  When we looked around, all of the boats had left except for one a short distance away.  As the weather worsened, we knew we were in trouble, and the boat still wouldn't start.  We yelled for the last remaining boat in our sight, with no avail.  We yelled again in unison and they finally heard us, just as they were getting ready to drive away.  The boat drove over, we tied on and they began to tow us home.  The rain was pretty heavy at this point, and the kids were starting to get scared, cold and wet.  As the boat towed us around the channel, it started to spit pea sized hail.  Who knew hail would hurt that bad?  Just as the good Samaritans pulled us into our dock, the neighbor men came running out to help get our boat tied down and get the kids in the house.  The good Samaritans drove off with just a wave of the hand.  We didn't get to say thank you, and who knows how far they had to travel in the fierce weather to get home.  Once inside we all dried off, changed our clothes and joked about how we had survived "the perfect storm". 

We are survivors!

...and we all looked a little wet!

The guys laughing at the radar and how crazy it was that we were all out in that!

As you can see, the kids survived with no trauma!

We were supposed to grill out, but we decided to order pizza instead.

As we were eating, I looked out and saw that the boat had come untied.  Austin went out to retrieve it with the help of our neighbor.

When the weather let up, Lex and Micki went outside to gather up all of our belongings left on the boat during the storm.

...and as you can see, little Miss Hadley was not bothered at all by the storm!

The weather cleared up again for the remainder of the night.  A group of people were having a large party with a DJ across the lake.  We all sat outside, enjoyed the music and watched the hour long fireworks show.  Despite the storm, we had a great day hanging out and enjoying the pre-fourth of July celebration!