4th of July recap

To once again celebrating this national holiday our traditional way, we drove to the Reagan Library in the morning. The Tune Bandits performed the music this year. That lady has a wonderful voice and her husband (I presume that he is) played on a conga drum was also excellent! After Christine and Joshua got their "tattoos" on their arms, we went to hear the story telling by James Woodard. It was great until he injected his political opinion saying that President Lincoln and President Obama have many things in common. He lost us after that. We L.O.V.E. President Lincoln, we have no comment on Obama.

After Storytelling time, we walked around the courtyard and the South Lawn. Ate some free watermelon and everyone except me (cake was too sweet for me) had a piece of birthday cake (Happy Birthday U.S.A.) in the Main Lobby. While Joshua waited in line for a Balloon Creation, We went to guess the amount of the jelly beans. Christine tried the Bow and Arrow game which reminded us that we need to check out the Archery program in Simi. The Balloon line was looooong. Still waiting for Joshua, we sat and watched the Cowboy Dave Trick Roping show by Dave Thornbury at the Courtyard Stage. We stayed until 1:30pm to hear the announcement of the Jelly Bean Guessing Game winner. A little girl got it! It was 8,800 Jelly Bean she had to take home and eat! Our number was far from it!


On the way home, we decided to stop by the T.E.A. party and exercised our freedom of speech while we still CAN. Joshua really liked it. It was a great experience for all of us. Robert couldn't stand out in the sun because he had a really bad sun burn but he took pictures of us in action.

When we got home, we were very tired and had a quick home grilled burger and fries for dinner. Put Peter to bed and enjoyed the fireworks upstairs! We had a great view and the "water fall" firework was my favorite.

We watched the National Geographic Document of the Pearl Harbor afterward. It was a good brief visual history review. We paused and discussed as we watched the movie.

We had a full and blessed day yesterday.


The fountain shot.


Our little patriot.


This was cool. We were filling in the flag with red, white and blue tissue papers. We forgot to take another picture when we were ready to leave.

It'd be neat to see how it'd turned out...

Storytelling time: He told three stories - (we missed the first one) Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

The Story Teller put Peter to sleep. :)

Cowboy Dave performing his rope tricks and showing the kids how to do it.

Here is Josh with his cool Balloon Gun that he waited in line for over an hour!

8,800 Jelly Beans! (see the jar on the stage floor behind the post)

Christine didn't want the paint on her face (smart move for her skin) so she had him put it on her arm.

Joshua wanted a second painting on his wrist.

I was told there were about 75 people at one point that morning joining the T.E.A. party.

Always and forever.

Mother and Son team.

His facial expression matched his sign perfectly! LOL! click on it.

We had so much drive-by support that we were greatly encouraged by it. One passenger even rolled down the window and asked a demonstrator what this was all about. After he told her. She shook his hand and gave us a "thumbs up" before she drove on. We got some "thumbs down" too but overall it was a positive responding from the public.

Isn't it the truth.

and she really meant it, too. :)

Fireworks!

more fireworks!

I didn't really like this one.

The red firework seemed to come out better on the camera.

Thank you Christine for taking all of the fireworks pictures (and the video of the finally)

Peter was trying to walk down stairs by himself and brother thought it would be good to hold his hands out just for in case.

I love how they love each other.