Birthday Fun!

We had lots of fun for Marina's birthday. I think she was birthday'd out by the time it ended. We started on Friday, taking the kids to a play at Crown Centre, compliments of Matt and Carrie Jordan. It was our Christmas present! Here's Marina standing on stage.... Jett thought she was going to have to perform since it was her birthday but that wasn't the case. We also went to dinner at Fritz's there... they delivered our food by train car! Everyone got a train hat to wear.

The next day was the big party... family, friends, food and lots of presents!

July 5th - Still Fun!

First of all -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRAMMA JJ!

Today is July 5th. Our friends, the Mudgetts, were in the Mario Andretti Racing School today. It was Rusty's Christmas gift from his wife, Kristin, to learn how to drive a racing car on the Kansas Speedway. We went to watch.

Here is Jett and Sam enjoying some time in the pit.

Rusty in his cool racing outfit, waiting for his car.

Then Mark decided he would do a ride-along. Jett was sad because he couldn't drive in the car. Marina was excited to watch him ride. Mark got to ride 3 laps in the LOWE'S racing car. He road with a professional driver who said they were reaching speeds around 175 mph! Here is MJ with his helmet, in the car, doing a lap!

A photo as we were leaving of the two types of cars you could drive/ride.

Jett and Marina settled for these rides instead of the big ones that Mark did!

Fireworks & More

We had a great evening on Lake Quivira. There were lot of folks out there. Our friends invited us to their dock for boating and fun. Mark and I remembered where we were watching the fireworks last year... not far from his hotel in KC because we were looking for houses over the long weekend. We were here last year as visitors ... now this is our home. Glad we found such a beautiful place to live.





Jett caught a big one!

I could show you my lousy attempts at taking firework photos but instead I'll show you this one. I love the way the glow of the fireworks is reflecting off of them. It was red, as you can tell. This setting is called "candlelight" so it's not as clear but I still love this photo. Marina was ready to sleep but stayed up for the whole thing! Jett made it too but slept through the first few minutes. We had a wonderful 4th of July! Hope you did too!

Happy 4th Part 2

Man, we dominated that parade! Check out our prizes!!





















Scenes from Lake Quivia's event...

Happy 4th of July!

We had a blast this morning. A neighborhood parade, pool party complete with games and then to Lake Quivera to do it all over again!



Marina shows her beau, Josh, how to operate her parade entry.




Jett shows off his bike to Samantha (or "Sam" as we call her), complete with his own sign he made. The "M" in America was sideways, but other than that I'd say it was pretty darn good!

Mark drove the parade route (our neighborhood, from the entrance to the pool). He picked up Sam & Josh's dad, Rusty, and together with Uncle Same, they made a nice entry to the parade. Here, Jett poses with his cool bike!