Adventures with four girls: 4th of July and more in Arkansas

Thursday, July 7, 2016

4th of July and more in Arkansas

We love going to Arkansas for the 4th of July and as a part of that tradition, we love seeing extended family!

We spent 4th of July weekend in Little Rock with lots of extended family. It's become a wonderful tradition that we try to do over the summer each year and over 4th of July when we can. It was a very active weekend - a 5K run where 8 of us ran (some of us slower than others..ahem, might have been me bringing up the rear!), a hike up Pinnacle Mountain, a fun walking neighborhood 4th of July parade where they read the Declaration of Independence at the end (and a fire truck!), and a fun annual swim party where the kids slide and jump and play our annual game of trying to catch a ball mid-air when jumping off the diving board. We had lots of family time, ate lots of great meals and got excited at Vanessa's growing belly knowing that Baby Cousin McKuin will be here in September.

Family members, as usual I did a better job of talking to everyone than I did of taking photos so if you have any good ones of this trip, send them to me - I don't have any of most everyone else (you'd never know from my photos that it was actually a quite large group of us!)

All good stuff!

Kids at the Rome airport with Gammy and Poppy. Can't believe they are flying to the US without us! Jake and I were back to the UAE to work for a week before joining up with the girls in Arkansas. Love Anna's slightly worried face about saying good-bye to us.

Reunited with the kids after they had a fun few days with Gammy & Popply. Uncle Tim, Aunt Vanessa and Uncle John (spotted in blue in the back) too us to one of the local Farmers' Market! Baby goats! We miss real farmer's markets.

River front playground

Hot day for a hike to the top of Pinnacle Mountain

There was a lot of rock scrambling to get to the top. We were huffing and puffing a bit but easy-breasy for this little Jane.

Even Anna made it to the top! Yay, Anna!

Sweet James made it to the top as well with his proud dad!

Kids table - look at these sweet kids of (most of) the cousins!

Look - hamburger shaped cookie!

Front yard baseball game. Go Meredith. Nice pitch, Lucy.

It's a hit. This was a bit before Regan's hit when John took a flying leap through the air to catch it and had an unfortunate run in with a bird feeder. Ouch.

Summer on a porch swing

Competitive game of chess. I have a very hard time walking by and not giving advice (even though I am terrible at chess!)

Firecracker 5K. Off Meredith goes! This was after she decided that I ran too slowly so off she went on her own.

So Jane started with Meredith and me but quickly decided (maybe 2 minutes into the race) that she wanted to go faster. She finally caught up with Jake and Regan right before the finish line. She was excited to see them but when Regan saw her, she said she thought "Oh, no!" and she took off like a flash. Jane dashed ahead, too. Regan just barely beat her across the finish line but because Regan crossed the starting line before Jane, Jane ended up beating Regan in the race by 0.07 seconds! Jake is behind Regan (in white and orange) laughing at his fast girls who competitively dashed to the finish line!

Firecracker 5K finishers. Well done! They all beat me (handily!)

Almost time for the "Never-on-time" 4th of July neighborhood 4th of July parade (they really threw us off because last year, it was actually on time. Not so much this year!

Maxson on the left. One of my favorite moments at the parade was when he was running to keep near the firetruck. He came back to me and could barely contain himself, "This...is...AWESOME!" was his take the morning.