Red, White, & Boom

Columbus does a big firework show every year called Red, White, and Boom.  They actually do it on the 3rd of July for a couple of reasons- so that everyone can stay out late (get drunk) and have the next day off to recover, and also so that it doesn't interfere with city fireworks.  It gave us something fun to do on the 3rd, so we didn't mind.  We heard it is crazy downtown trying to get out after fireworks, so we went downtown earlier and went to the kids area with inflatable stuff and free food and drinks, and then we drove out of downtown and watched the fireworks from a distance and ate lots of treats in the back of our van.

More fun things with the Rasmussens

The kids played in the crazy down pouring rain one afternoon...

We went swimming...

We watched fun things on the ipad (Lucy finally started to warm up to them a teeny bit)...

We played at a big, indoor play place on a rainy day (there's a gated small part for little kids, and then the huge, tall part for older kids)...

 I now present you with the two best crazy faces Lucy has ever made.  :)

 Jackson and Bennett were so excited, they did dances when they got to the bottom of the big slides (not really- we just got some funny action shots of them).

We painted, made up fun games, and ate lots of snacks...

We played with glow sticks and tested them out in all the dark rooms of the house...

Michelle does gel nails and has all the professional equipment and gave us mani/pedi's that are still going strong over a week later!  She also taught me how to make her version of chocolate chip cookies, which happen to break every rule about baking cookies but they are surprisingly awesome

Ryan read books to the kids....

Domino phones

One morning, Lucy and Stella pulled two booster seats out of the back room and put them next to each other in the living room.  They took a seat and then each picked up one domino and had a conversation with each other like they were talking on the phone.  It was the cutest thing ever.  I'll let the pictures do the talking since I don't know what they were saying.