Fourth of July at the Beach House

 I know, I know!  It has been a terribly long time.  No excuses other than busy, busy, busy.  We are at the beach house and so I am finding a little time to do some blogging.  And I did promise that I would try to post more often now that Kami has moved to Barcelona  I do need to keep her up on what is happening here at home.

  Here are the girls when we first got here.  We ran down to the beach to collect some rocks for later painting.  A few interesting things about this picture.  With the girls standing on the rocks it probably would be hard to tell who is who.  Of course you can tell which one is Lily, since she is the oldest and tallest.  She is 9 years old, 49 pounds and 50 inches tall.  Then Meilynn in the pink shirt and white crop pants.  She and Emma who are only three months a part have always gone back in forth in size.  They are very close, but for the most part, Emma has been the the taller of the two, until this year.  Meilynn is 44 and 3/4 inches tall and weighs almost 40 pounds and Emma is 44 inches tall and weighs 40 pounds.  Meilynn is 7 and Emma turns 7 next month.  In this picture Emma looks shorter than everyone and it looks like she has short hair.  I think it looks really cute, but her hair is really the same length as Meilynn's.  And then there is our little Jilly (Jilliana).  I think she is going to be the tallest when they are full grown.  She is 4 1/2 and is 40 inches tall and only 29 pounds.  But in this picture she looks taller than Emma.

 After collecting rocks the girls got ready to paint them.  Of course this meant a trip to Michaels's because we needed some supplies.

 We set up a craft table in the garage.  The beach house is quite a bit smaller than our house so we needed a craft room since the girls love to do crafts and we plan on doing a lot while we are here.  Mike goes back and forth between here and home since he goes back for meetings and to motorcycle ride.

 One of the really fun things we did was to take the train down to Little Italy in San Diego for dinner.  The girls had their nooks along for the trip.  It is a long story but we decided on Nooks for the girls instead of game systems.  This way I can choose to put only books and educational games on them.  I also thought they would be a great investment if I decided to homeschool this year.  (More on that in another post, I hope.)

 Little Italy

On fourth of July my Mom and Dad came down for the day and to spend the night.  In the beach house community there is always a 4th of July parade.  The girls always decorate their bikes for the little parade.  This year my Dad got to help decorate.

 Emma

 Jilliana and my Dad

 Meilynn

 Lily

 Meilynn and Emma

 All ready!

 Jilliana

 The beginning of the parade

 Grandma and Grandpa were the spectators.

After the parade we had a bar-b-que and then went to the fireworks.  The next day we drove down to La Jolla and watched the gliders at the gliderport.  We went up to Leucadia for Mexican food.  It was a great Fourth of July.