Jeez... I forgot July 4th!

I've been mildly busy lately and therefore my usual scattered memory has just been completely lost.  At least that's what I'm blaming spacing off the July 4th post on (this time...).

I posted about the fossil park, but then completely overlooked the rest of the weekend we had in Crystal Lake at Grandma & Grandpa Bushman's house. 

The boys nearly popped while waiting to go up there and then were mad, of course, when it was time to come home.  I reckon that's a good thing! :-)

So what does a couple of days in Crystal Lake over the 4th mean for the boys?

Happy boy #1.

Happy boy #2.

A 4th of July parade with tractors...

An indian...

A fire truck with all & sundry passengers...  who do you suppose is riding in this bad boy??

A small Chinese boy who appears to be ecstatic with his ride!

And larger American boy with a rather graceful exit from Engine 795.

The parade was over and the boys got a small rest before we headed down to the park for the tractor pull.

They did it by age groups so Calebber McCheese was up first.  Look at the determination on that face!  Can't see it very good in that small pic?

Here you go!

Hippy boy Rob, was finally up. He went about as far as Caleb did and neither one of them earned one of the highly coveted trophies they were handing out. Neither one of them were very happy that they did not win one of the trophies either!

After licking the wounds of defeat from the tractor pull, Momma, Robby and Caleb were huddled together in the shade and looking cute.

As is the Schmitz Mobile Chaos custom, we had our picture taken by a corn field on the 4th of July.  Why?  Why not, I say.  It's all based on the old saying about corn, "knee high by the 4th of July".  Sure the outside row of corn is in the pic, but usually it's about as tall as myself, which is to say, about 6 ft (you foreign readers will have to convert that yourselves to meters...  I'm tired.).  Is it scientific?  Nope, not at all.  Is it fun to look at the photos from year to year?  Absolutely.

Caleb holding his Granpa's hand, walking with Grandma as we head on down to the lake for fireworks.  Awesome fireworks too.  I thought G'pa had talked too much about how good they were, but then they kept going, and going.  The "water dancers" were some of the coolest fireworks that I've ever witnessed.  Write this down but keep it a secret, Crystal Lake Iowa has better fireworks than Prairie Meadows, the casino in Altoona Iowa (who has a pretty dang good show of their own!).

And so was our 4th of July.