celebrate…

Happy Independence Day! :o)

We’ve been celebrating for the last few days – and I’m so excited that we get another day to celebrate again today!  It’s been a busy weekend for us.  Our cute little niece was baptized on Saturday and we were so happy to be there for her special day.  Then we had a big fun family luncheon afterwards – complete with water balloons, football, and frisbee!  After lunch was over the kids weren’t even close to being done playing with each other, so we invited all of the cousins to our house where they put the sprinkler under the trampoline, broke out the squirt guns, and our new snow cone machine – the kids had so much fun playing together – I love seeing them all hanging out and enjoying each other.  (Unfortunately, I was too busy shaving ice and filling squirt guns to take any photos.)  Our Saturday fun didn’t end there – we all went up to my parent’s property in Lake Creek to hike and go 4-wheeling and eat another delicious meal.  I love hanging out with my family!  It also happened to be my brother’s birthday, but he had to work and then had some other obligations, so we’ll be celebrating his birthday soon.

Yesterday evening we had some friends (and former neighbors) over for a BBQ.  They have two little kids who our kids just love to play with – and again, there was much water involved in their evening.  We had delicious food, played games, and had our own little fireworks show – another fun evening!

Today, I woke up to this announcement at Two Peas In a Bucket:

I’ve been keeping this one “under wraps” for a few weeks, and I’m so glad I can finally share my news.  I joined the Two Peas community a long, long time ago (September of 2000) so I am really excited to be a part of their design team now!  I’ve always shared my work in my gallery there, but now I get to share even more! :o)

Then, I saw one of my cards featured today on the Paper Crafts Magazine blog:

{This card was published by Paper Crafts Magazine in A Card A Day}

It seems there is a fun contest going on there – a color challenge using my card as the inspiration for the color combo. 

You can read more about it on their blog here – and good luck if you choose to enter!

We’re having a nice, slow, lazy morning here at our house.  (Well, some of us are – Brad has already been up and going and now he’s at our rental house mowing the lawn and doing some yard work.)  I’m baking blueberry muffins for breakfast, which we’ll have with some strawberries and whipped cream…’cause you know, we have to have red, white, and blue for breakfast today!    We don’t have any “set in stone” plans, but I’m sure our day will involve more good food, water of some sort, and fireworks at the end of the day.  No matter what we do, I know we’ll have a fun family day filled with good times and celebrating – I hope you do too! :o)