happy july 4th!

o and i have had a great long weekend!  we got up saturday and headed to monroe to spend the day with jackie and her in-laws.  we swam for a few hours at their house and then o played with brintley for several more hours.  lots of little girl fun was had by all!  they were allowed to jump on the bed.  i’m pretty sure o thought i was the devil when we got home and i wouldn’t let her jump on my bed.  :)  to bad i didn’t take a single photo of them together.  thanks bud and joni for having us over!  if you’re reading this we’ll definitely come back before the summer is over!

after church on sunday i decided to have a low key afternoon INSIDE b/c, let’s be honest, it’s too hot to do anything else!  we colored, read books, played dress-up, etc.  o reinforced my thought that she may be left handed.  she used her left hand for EVERYTHING!  a friend told me today that lefties are usually artistic so maybe she’ll be famous for her artwork one day! 

we then met shelley and avie for dinner at old mexico.  then to trinity to kill time before temple’s fireworks show.  this was shelley’s idea to let them play on the playground before the show started.  brilliant!  i live about 45 seconds from trinity (the church where we are members) and it has never occurred to me to use their playground!  it’s close by, it’s free, it’s fenced in and most importantly o loves it!  we will definitely start spending some evenings up there! then we made our way to the front where a pretty large crowd had gathered to wait on the show.  i absolutely love that temple does this for ruston.  it’s a great show.  the lawn in front of trinity was full of families and kids were running everywhere.  this was the first time that olivia has played WITH another child.  she LOVED avie and would mimic her every move.  it was so fun to watch!  i’m not sure why this started last night…  maybe b/c my friends either have boys or girls the same age as o and they are just too young to know how to play together.  i’m not sure.  avie is almost a year older than o and maybe o “sensed” she was with an “older” girl who “knew more”.  whatever it was, it was precious!  they played chase.  they turned flips in the grass.  they laughed together.  so much fun!  i didn’t get o into bed until 9:45; that’s a record! today we headed over to nicola and jeff’s for a bbq and to hang out.  o was so sweet with kaden.  she shared with him and helped him play in his new kitchen.  i was so glad b/c “sometimes” she doesn’t like to share or play nice!  we are very much in the “mine” state of mind these days…  i guess i’d say that we made major strides in playing WITH other kids instead of playing AROUND other kids this weekend and it was so fun to watch.  thanks for having us over!  it was fun! yes, she wore the same outfit 2 days in a row.  we needed to get good wear out of our holiday outfit and i promise i washed it!