Happy 4th of July

Grandma Lois and Grandpa Joe came up this year for Fourth of July and we spent a few days enjoying the local festivals.

We went to ole downtown Galax and watched the lawn mower races (well for a little while, until Grandma Nurse Lois couldn't take the risky racing and near miss accidents anymore - and there were a couple of scary close calls). We also let Ella experience a little bit of her first carnival. She rode the Merry-Go-Round horse and had an absolute blast (somehow I don't have a picture of this . . . . grrrr). And then got to jump around in the bouncy house with some bigger kids. In fact when her time was up, she had so much fun that they had to clear out the big kids and let Daddy go in after her to get her out of there.

The next day we went down to a festival David had been excited and ancy about for a couple of weeks. They had small and large engines of all different types doing all kinds of different jobs. We watched some of a tractor pull, had homemade ice cream, and rode a train.

On the train ride, Ella got a little sunscreen in her eye and rubbed it until it was puffy and swollen, but she was still a trooper and calmed down with a little water and lemonade to drink. We left the festival right after this though because it was quite hot that day. We went out from there for some BBQ and then headed up to Hillsville for the fireworks show. The fireworks made Ella nervous at first, but once she was used to them she kept shouting "Pretty mama pretty" and telling me the color of each one. A pretty great weekend overall.

A couple of nice family photo shots after church all dressed up.

Love, love, love my family (p.s. here is an early baby belly shot hidden in this picture as well)