4th of July weekend!

A wonderful weekend!!  My sister, 3 parades, a party, and fireworks!!!  What more could we ask for?!

My sister Lisa came home this week!!!  I haven't seen her for 4 1/2 months because she's been on the east coast volunteering for Americorp!!  She had 10 days off and now is leaving again tomorrow morning for another 4 1/2- 5 months! :(  I was happy that Haven warmed back up to her really quickly b/c Haven can be really shy around some people!  And Venily couldn't get enough of her either.  I think we're going to have to get a Skype account to talk to her more!

We started off our 4th of July weekend with the annual Lily Lake kids' parade.  This is a tradition that I've been doing since I was little, lol!  And the girls have participated in it every year!  It's a tiny little parade that goes from the top of a hill down to the bottom, but the kids dress up and decorate their bikes and stuff and there are prizes and free candy and soda, popcorn, games, etc.  There was only 4 different categories and a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd winner from each category and my girls won 1st place in 2 of the categories!!!  (Venily for best on wheels- she was Miss Lily Lake and had her power wheel car all decorated and Haven for funniest patriotic kid- she was a firework!!)!!!  They each won $15!

And some more pics from the parade:

And Haven was SUCH a trooper and wore her little costume the whole time (well, except for the hat, that lasted about 20 seconds, lol!  But I was still impressed!!!)

Here are pics from years passed, lol!!

2010: (Venily was 2 years and 8 months old and Haven was 9 months old!)

2009: (Venily was 22 months old- and also won 1st place!)

2008: (Venily was 8 months old!)

After the parade we went to my Uncle's 4th of July party that he has every year!

Sunday we went for a bike ride in Kenosha and happened to stumble on their parade as well!  And we can't resist a parade...

Monday we went to Kansasville's parade too, lol!!

 And we went to Kenosha to see fireworks with Jake and Crystal!  Last year we didn't go at all b/c the kids were in bed, but this year we decided to go even though it was passed the girls' bedtime!  I didn't have high hopes especially when this is what the car ride there looked like:

but the girls were great!  We sat out on the rocks right on Lake Michigan.  We were kind of far away so it wasn't loud at all.  There weren't a TON of people all around us and the girls enjoyed watching them and were really good.  Haven liked saying the colors of the fireworks and was asleep again by the end, haha!

Now I think we're going to start having parade withdrawals after this weekend, lol!!