Happy Birthday USA

I love the Fourth of July.  It's a great day to spend in town with our neighbors (actually, I love any Federal holiday that involves the pool and cookout with our friends).

This year, Carmel was practically bursting with Americana.  It was such a typical midwestern American town that I almost expected John Melloncamp to walk out from behind a tree.  Despite the 100 degree day, the streets were lined with people to watch the Annual parade.  The fourth largest 4th of July parade in the nation, I might add.

Our crew. This has become a little tradition of ours.  The moms go for breakfast, the dads load up the snacks and we all meet at the same place to watch the parade

We normally sit at the end of the route so it takes a while for the parade to reach us.  But when it does, we are all extra excited to see the guy on stilts.

Of course, what is a parade in Indiana without the Speedway bagpipers--Offical pipers of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Also, you need a princess and a pace car.

A tractor, of course.  This is Indiana.

And Indiana's favorite sportscar--represented by the Corvette club.  Incidently, we found out that other friends that we were sitting with had a Corvette pacecar in the family.  Until the Grandpa sold it to get a motorcycle or something.

And Mini Corvettes.  come on!

And finally, the lawn mower trick teams.  They aren't spending any time cutting grass around here.

A completely unstaged picture.  Red, White and Blue dads.  The ones on the ends are extra classy.

A Pinteresting Summer

So the plan for the summer is to take it easy and have fun.  Well, the weather has been so wickedly hot that we had to move some of the fun inside.

I recently got on Pinterest and found a whole slew of crafts for the kids to make.  One hot afternoon after the pool, we decided to make dream catchers out of plastic yogart lids. First you wrap them with yarn.

Then you make the web and hot glue the feathers on.  They must be working because no one has had any bad dreams in a while.

Jim's delayed Father's day dinner also came from Pinterest.  Dorito Taco Bake Casserole.  This goes against every fiber of my being, but even I had to admit that it was good in a Yellow No. 5 kind of way. 

We also worked on weaving a rug on a hula hoop loom.  This was our warp.

While the rug weaving was happening inside, we put the sun to work to creat some melted crayon art.  We discovered that the darker colors melted the fastest.  This is the end of sitting in the driveway on a 105 degree day for 6 hours.

Back inside, we worked on the rug.

The finished product.  That is a lot of old t-shirts!

Mom got a little goofy and wrapped a big piece of fabric around her, sari style.

And we also tried cutting the bottoms of wine bottles off with fire.  Not the best idea with a burn ban, but we had the hose nearby.  And it was an excuse to play with fire and drink beer with the neighbors.  Always a good combo.