Happy 4Th Of July!

Today we celebrated the 233rd Birthday of Freedom and Independence of this great nation that we are all so blessed to live in. I am always moved to deep emotion when it comes to this particular holiday, I love America and all of the abundance that we have here, we truly are a blessed nation.

All of the red white and blue even covered the table, it is so festive and brings a spark of fun to the day, Luanna always decorates for things and today was no exception.

We spent the afternoon and evening with Richard and Luanna Greenhalgh, they are such a sweet couple and we seem to have adopted each other, truly a joy to spend time with them .

Elise also made it home from Girls Camp today! We all missed her, the little girls both said they missed her on Tuesday and she had only been gone for about 24 hours at that point. This was Elise's last year at girls camp as a youth, she is sad about it in some ways but also is happy to be growing up and moving on. She was a leader this year again and taught outdoor skills, one of her classes was teaching the second year campers how to make breakfast over the fire. She also taught them how to start a fire without matches..there of course were several other classes she taught the two mentioned were the ones the girls talked about the most.

Also this last week, we had a little guy decide to adopt himself into the Brunette household. He came to us last Saturday full of filth, dreadlocks, EXTREMELY long toenails and in serious need of TLC, training, etc etc etc. Elise, Janelle and Malia took him in and bathed him a total of 4 times before he came clean. They then dried him and gave him a rest from all the attention. I later took him on with brush,comb, scissors, clippers and toenail clippers to unveil a very cute little guy under the dreadlocks and tangles. We watched him for a few days and got to know his personality, found out more info on him from the neighbors and decided to call him Brutus. It is a very fitting name, he is a total Brute and is learning the in's and outs of Brunette household life, there are rules to learn and he does have a good leader to show him the way, Mr. Gaston is well seasoned and well mannered so Brutus is learning pretty quickly.

On Monday we were invited to my friend Kara's house to enjoy her pool. We packed up lunch and enjoyed the afternoon in the sun, pool and hot tub. Zachariah is in the mask and Austin is in front of him.

Here are Janelle and Malia enjoying their floaty toys and playing. This was a lot of fun and we are going back this Monday with Elise this time for more fun in the sun!