A Dover 4th of July and Fruit Loops!!

      Our first Fourth of July in Dover was simply fabulous!!  Ryan and I were lame and really didn't have much planned for our 4th until my wonderful brother, Bryan, and sister-in-law, Wendy, (and Jack, of course) decided they were going to come to Dover to spend the holiday with us!!  I was so excited to be able to once again spend this family holiday with some family:)

Bryan, Wendy and Jack met us at our AF base pool around lunch time where we had a blast swimming with the kids!!  No pics of that :(  Then later, after naps, we went into downtown Dover for the parade.  Ryan was super stoked for it.....

 It was VERY hot...and the parade was underwhelming...but we still had fun and made some great memories!!

 Here's the whole gang:)

 Here is the one and only "float", if you can call it that, in the Dover parade.....haha!!

 Jack really loved Elmo and was so sad when he left.

 After the parade we cooled off and had dinner at Red Lobster!!  The kids were well behaved and we just had a nice time:)

 Dover may have had a crappy parade...but they delivered on the fireworks and put on a great fireworks show:)  It was a perfect night- eating ice cream and watching the firworks:)

 Beckham was enthralled the whole time!

 Jane was a goof ball, as usual!  She LOVED having Wendy, Bryan and Jack with us and didn't want them to go home:)

 Thanks for making our 4th of July wonderful by coming to spend the day with us Bryan, Wendy and Jack!!!

I just had to throw this in...this is the lovely mess Beckham made the other day, coupled with a super cute "I'm in trouble" face to go with it!!

 AND...here he is cleaning it up :)

Ryan's C17 Adventure!!

Ryan got the amazing opportunity to go on a C17 refueling mission!!!  Pharmacists rarely get to go on these missions, so Ryan was super excited that he had this opportunity!!  C17 jet engine airplanes are HUGE and are used to ship cargo of all kinds to troops overseas.  Here he is...giddy as a school boy...to get going!!

Here's a picture of the cockpit with the four pilots...

The next few pictures were taken during the refueling part of the mission!!  This fuel plane was only 30 feet above the C17 Ryan was riding in.  The pilots had to be very careful to move with the plane above.  If it dipped, they had to dip, if it turned, they turned. The fact that it started to rain didn't help things.  Ryan said several times the plane above would hit turbulence and suddenly lose air, coming dangerously close to their plane- eeek!!

They were so close to the fueling plane that Ryan was able to get this sweet picture of  the guy in a pit at the bottom of the plane controlling the refueling hose.  This dude's super concentrated face cracks me up!!

Well, Ryan got home late from the mission and raved about how amazing it was!!!  I am glad he had such a cool opportunity :)

As a side note, we finished our June camping themed "summer camp" with Mother Goose Time.  I had so much fun doing this with my kids and I am looking forward to doing it in the fall with Beckham and a few of his friends from church!!  It will be a lot of fun!! Here are the kids with their rainbow art projects, their finished "camping journals"- or letter books, and our camp time memory book!!

A lot of Adventure Around these Parts...

 This past week has been an adventurous one!!!  We took a quick day trip to Wilkes Barra, PA to see the live version of How to Train Your Dragon. It was a long...but insanely BEAUTIFUL drive!! To keep the kiddos happy during the drive we had a "hurricane" in the car.  Jane and Beckham thought that was super fun!!

 We chowed down on popcorn and treats while we waited.  Ryan and the kids were very excited to see the dragons...  so was I :)

 Needless to say, it was worth the drive and the wait!!  The dragons were stunning!!  They looked so real! Here is "Toothless" the dragon with Hiccup and Astrid riding him :)

 The "terrible terror" dragon.  He breathed fire and walked around and just looked and acted so real!

 can't remember his name...but he was so cool!! It took a lot of hugs and kisses and convincing that these dragons were not real to prompt Beckham to actually look at them.  Yes, the poor boy was absolutely terrified for the first few minutes...But he warmed up eventually :)

 Here is Hiccup's dad.  He came out right by us.  His outfit was amazing!

After the show we went to a Hibachi grill for dinner!! The kids loved watching the guy cook our food.  They thought he was the coolest guy ever!







We had a fabulous time!!!  More pics about Ryan's C17 adventure in a few days!!