4th of July Weekend Trip

We spent the 4th of July at my mom's house in St. George, Ut., this year. My brother and his family were there as well, so my kids got to play with their cousins, Mason and Tanner. It's so fun to see how cute they are together and how much they love each other. Mason is the caretaker of the whole group but most especially of little Ricky. Ricky adores his Mason and lights up when he sees him. Kayla and Tanner are best buddies.

On Saturday, we got to Nana Katies and the Dads took the kids swimming while the Mom's got to go shopping for a bit at the outlet mall. After that we all got in the pool. My sister, Natalie, and her husband showed up for this and we all had such a good time. Kayla has been obsessed with Brad and Natalie since they got married last year and she spends a good deal of time talking on her play phone to them. It's really cute.


While we were in the pool, the boys started having a belly flop game. I'm pretty sure Rick won. He and my brother, Cory, did it at the same time once and the result was hilarious. I tried to do a belly flop twice but instinct kicked in at the last minute and it ended up as only a sort of falling into the pool. I will not be putting those pictures on here, I don't want to scare anyone!

Kayla got really brave and started jumping off the side of the pool to us without her floaties and Ricky just had fun sitting in his floatie kicking his feet and splashing.

After all that, we went into St. George to a park where they had all kinds of rides and bouncy things for the kids and they had so much fun. Then of course came the fireworks. We didn't stay at the park cuz we had a whole bunch at home to do and the kids loved it. Except Ricky. He didn't like the noise and he was so tired that he snuggled with Nana Katie for a bit, then fell asleep when I held him. He had so much fun he was just tuckered out.

The next day, Rick and I went to Las Vegas for a much needed mini vacaction. We stayed at the Imperial Palace on the strip. It was pretty nice. They had in the middle of the casino a place set up for celebrity impersonators to perform as well as deal cards. They are called "Dealertainers" and we saw Toby Keith, Reba McEntire, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, The Blues Brothers, Roy Orbison, Alice Cooper, Joan Jett, Little Richard, and last but not least, Micheal Jackson. It was fun.

We saw some of our friends that we haven't seen since we left there 4 years ago. We had a great time catching up with them. We also went to the outlets there and did a little bit of shopping. It was a nice break for us and I wish it could have been longer. Forgot to take the camera around with us in Vegas, so I don't have any pictures to post. Oh well, you know what they say about what happens in Vegas......