payne-a-palooza...

We spent the holiday weekend with Preston's family. The whole family was finally in one place at one time with their kids. We kept busy the entire time. We went to a parade, fireworks, had our own fireworks, went shopping (my favorite), went swimming, did some sidewalk chalk art, had family pics taken, celebrated a birthday, and ate and ate and ate (whew!)....

The weekend was full of picture perfect moments but being the great photographer I am I only caught a few... (I'm lucky I remembered the camera and that it had fully charged batteries in it). 

 Deakon made it through about thirty seconds of the parade and then zonked out. He even slept through the firetruck horns, shotguns, and tractors. I was a little surprised but he had no idea what was going on so it was ok.

Bhule has a firework show we went to. It definitely wasn't the "Melaleuca Freedom Celebration" but it was entertaining to say the least. Plus we didn't have to deal with weird people crowds, traffic, and we had the best spot ever (we didn't have to camp out all day to keep it either).

(I soo wish Deakon could sit up on his own...I'm tired of having his dads arms in all the pics.)

To keep the kids entertained Kariann bought a gi-normose box of sidewalk chalk. I had some fun with it too. Kariann wrote the kids names on the fence and Anthony pulled me over there and showed me that he had added Deakon's name. "It's spelled wrong Aunt Devry, because I didn't know how to spell it"....such a sweet little boy.

...All in all it was a fun weekend. Preston and I agreed that the best part was stepping back and observing all the action. Watching how the siblings (who now all have little budding families) interact with their own kids, their spouses, and each other. We don't get to see the family often enough so it's always hard to say goodbye. We already miss them...