Remember the Alamo!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend! Brandon and I spent the weekend at the lake with his family, and it was a blast! One of the little cousins had made a replica of the Alamo for school this year and saved it to 'blow up with fireworks' so all weekend, we would hear a black cat go off and then kids yelling, "REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!!"

This weekend we watched people start 3 different fires, and when I say fires, I mean big ones where the fire truck had to help out. Mostly it was the cattails that were igniting but it sure did give us a show from across the lake. The next door neighbors however, decided they were done so they put all of their hot firework trash into a 5 gallon bucket and went inside. Within minutes, it went up in flames and one of Brandon's uncles had to go down there and throw it in the lake--the neighbors had no idea!

We also had a 6 year old pyromaniac, Carson. You may remember him as the sweet little boy in a tux as the ring bearer in our wedding.

Isn't he just so sweet and innocent looking with his cousin Abby? That was when he was 5...

This is him at 6... (with the Alamo)


Here, all the boys joined in for the fun..


At Mimi and Papa's house, we all write our names on our cups so we don't go through so many (I mean there were 17 of us). I came inside looking for my cup and found this..

On the other side it said Trey (the oldest of the younger cousins) I thought it was pretty funny.

Apparently the kids have a competition with the "blue house" across the lake every year to see who has the best fireworks show. As we were out on the lake Saturday we kept seeing them bring down trailers full of fireworks and set them up on the lawn to get ready for the show. The boys didn't stand a chance with the thousands of dollars spent across the way, but it sure did leave us with a good show!

The best part was the boys kept saying on Sunday that they 'poned' the blue house ('poned'' is their way of saying 'owned' or 'beat' --it must be a Dallas thing, or they just made it up).

Last 4th of July, Brandon and I had found this shirt at Bealls for like $2 and he wore it when we were in Colorado, right after we had gotten engaged. Well, we had to make sure it made its Graham debut with the family, so it go packed and was worn all weekend. What we forgot though was that when he lived in Snyder, Bridger had gotten mad because she was in her kennel and pulled it in there to eat all but two of the buttons off of it! He still made it work though! We took Mimi out on the boat for a ride, but then the sand bass started running and Brandon couldn't resist! He caught 17 in less than 15 minutes!

This was only my second time on the boat since he's had it for about a month and a half, and he even let me take a picture of us!

And this was the sunset that we watched from the boat with some of the kiddos and Mimi. I just love how it reflects off the water!

When we go to the lake there is a lot of eating, fishing, swimming, laying out, and water sports. I tried my efforts at knee boarding again and was able to successfully do a full 360 about 5 or 6 times! I was so proud! One of the funniest things about that was the time I wiped out about a third of the way across the lake but in front of our dock and Bridger was so concerned she swam all the way out to check on me with Jeff, one of the cousins, on her tail trying to catch her. We had to put her on the knee board and pull her back in to get her to leave... so Bridger did a little knee boarding too!

The older boys did a little bit of wakeboarding, which I wish I knew how to do, but have just never tried it.. Here's my little brother-in-law, Kirk doing a jump.

And here's my husband landing a jump!

This one is a pretty cool picture with the silhouette of Brandon.. doesn't he look good?

Everytime we go to the lake, Bridger wears herself out and will sleep for a full week to recover. This was just from Friday and we didn't get there until about 3:00. She was already tired and taking the attention she could get from Abby.

On the way home, she slept the whole way, except when we slowed down in a town, so I reached back and scratched her favorite spot.. Look at those eyes.. and that paw!

That's just about sums up our weekend!