Josh threw together some last minute plans for our 4th of July weekend (it's crazy, but sometimes, our last minute plans turn out to be our best plans). He rented a cabin for a couple of nights up at Union Creek. The cabin wasn't ready until 3:00pm, so we drove up to Crater Lake.
And though I've said that I only coordinate outifts on Christmas day and when we go to the pumpkin patch...I do it on the 4th of July too.
It's gorgeous up there - but these two and their fighting and complaining was about enough to send me over the edge, as was any conversation about Junior Rangers (they have a Junior Ranger program up at Crater Lake that sounded like a cool thing for the kids to do - but they wanted nothing to do with it), marshmallows (I would have never brought the dang marshmallows if I knew that Courtney was going to ask "When are we going to roast the marshmallows?" 14 million times) and laundry (Josh and I had a little argument the night before because I keep telling him to leave my laundry alone - but he keeps washing & drying it anyhow, ruining my clothes and I still wasn't completely over it).
Yes, I realize it is odd to argue with a man because he won't quit doing the laundry.
And Annie still wasn't feeling good.
That's Cole in time-out (and since there is nothing that Cole dislikes more than Courtney's singing and dancing, she decided to perform a little number right in front of him where she was sure he wouldn't miss it).
I know it looks like Cole is about to fall off the 'time-out wall', plummeting 2000ft. into the lake below, but (as wonderful as that sounds) there's a patch of land on the other side of that rock wall.
And when we got back, the Hammacker House was ready for us.
We had dinner (that's a blueberry).
The kids fought a little more.
We played catch and the kids took turns with my camera (not sure who took this shot).
And spent the rest of the evening goofing off outside (I wish this shot had turned out better).
And much to Courtney's delight; roasted marshmallows.
And then we headed up to the Fireworks show at Diamond Lake.
Where my kids complained about mosquitoes, the temperature and how tired they were.
And though we didn't get the best seats in the house (the fireworks were going off behind a bunch of trees), it was still a pretty cool site.
Josh took Cole & Courtney fishing the next morning at 5am.
They got back later that afternoon (everyone went to bed in their clothes the night before - hence the same outfits).
And as much as I hate to post dead fish pictures, Coley is pretty proud of these (they came home with three fish - Coley caught all of them - although Josh says that technically he caught one of these because both his and Coley's hook ended up in the same fish).
The quarter (Josh's idea) is meant to show a size comparison.
Will post more pictures from the weekend tomorrow - and I promise to post a bunch of pictures from my new CHA Summer 08 release on Thursday and Friday.