Fourth Fun

All signs are pointing to it being a summer of fish for us.  Uncle Matt found some fishing poles on Woot and sent a pair out for the kids earlier this summer.  We haven't gotten to use them for fish yet but James enjoys casting them around the house and fishing for kitties.  Matthew enjoys it too, up until the cats dare touch his fishing pole, line or caster, then it's a lot of "NO IRIS, NO LIVIA." Though we'll take our new poles to Alaska this summer, we didn't have room or baggage allowance this time.  Apparently my old snoopy pole wasn't in great shape so they spoiled Matthew with a new Cars pole.  He had asked every day to go fishing and spent a lot of time practice casting with the plastic tire included with the pole.  When we arrived at the lake I asked Matthew was he was going to catch.  He eagerly replied "a tire!".  I crushed his dreams when I responded that we were hopefully going to catch a fish but he eventually got over it.  Papa got him started:

 But it turned out Matthew had a pretty decent cast:

 And like every child, reeling was far more fun than waiting:

 While the boys were fishing, Catherine, Amma and I hung out in the shade and Catherine played with her shades.  I'd put them on her:

 Then she'd gigglesnort and start taking them off:

 The boys came back without a fish but pretty triumphant:

 We'd later get the report that Matthew indeed caught a fish.  Not too long after Matthew would report the size as well:

And a not too shabby attempt at a picture of all of us (though slightly out of focus):

 After a very hot afternoon of fishing we took to the lake for some sand and swim time.  Matthew held uncle Matt captive (and would have all night if we'd let him) cutting pizzas and other things from his world of make-believe while Catherine crawled in and out of the water.

We grilled burgers and dogs and had a nice assortment of summer fare for our picnic.  After dinnerMatthew got to try out his first sparklers:

 While Catherine crawled up and helped herself (literally) to the things sitting on the table:

 And while we had Matthew's favorite dessert planned, Catherine decided to help herself to some of mine:

And both of my messy kids refusing to look at the camera for Amma:

After a fantastic afternoon of fishing, swimming and picnicking we had stayed out way too late but couldn't resist letting Matthew try a few more sparklers in the dark.  He wasn't as big a fan of the wooden sparklers because they did some popping:

But with Papa's help he thought they were awesome:

The only thing that would have made the day better would have been if James had been here.  It wasn't our favorite Fourth of July in Lander by any stretch but we certainly made it our own and made it special.