Nutshell summer: This is July

We went up to visit Gramma Kamae and leave flowers. It's been 12 years.

We spent a great weekend with our Brandow Ohana who met us in San Francisco to watch the Dodgera play (smash) the Giants at AT&T park. Another ballpark to check off the list! We sure do love this family of ours. It was great fun to spend time with them!

I started a series of (6 weekly) cooking classes! Yum and loved it!

JT continued Dirtbag baseball camp earning the most improved player of the week award!

GK came down for the weekend to visit!

HeaBug started daily swim lessons that went on for a whole month. We rode bikes every day. She loves Ms Julie.

JT ended another week at camp, this time earning the Dirtbag Hustle award! This is his THIRD year winning this award!

We cut down a tree in our backyard, loaded it up and took it to the dump!

Our sweet nephew Kalani came to visit from New York for a week! We had so much fun!  We went to the circus.

We spent his 4th birthday at Disneyland!

Took him to his first Dodger game, they won and we got to see fireworks!

We wrapped up his awesome week up with a superhero birthday party celebrating this super special boy. Can't even say how much we enjoyed getting to spend time with this part of our heart that lives on the east coast.

Continued cooking classes

JT got an Iron Man award for attending so many weeks of Dirtbag camp! He was so excited! The award was signed by all the coaches.

Using my new crust recipe, we made apple pies with our friends the Mabry's! So much fun!

Busy and fun month!

4th of July 2012

 Happy 4th of July!

We have always enjoyed the 4th of July. The kiddos LOVE fireworks and so do we!  This year, we spend the afternoon with our friends the Darby's. Their neighborhood hosts a block party complete with slides, a bike parade, cotton candy and popcorn. JT and LaDy played and swam and had lots of fun! Hea Bug has been taking swimming lessons this summer from Mr. D and so she felt quite comfortable playing too. 

 We ate lots of yummy treats and then headed out to our evening o'fireworks. They aren't legal in Long Beach but our shop is in the city of Artesia where they are perfectly legal. Rock Steady is on an industrial street so we didn't have to worry about bothering neighbors. Our friends the M's met us there and we attempted to make vanilla ice cream in the lobby of our office. It never actually froze up but we had the most delicious strawberries and cream!

We pulled the furniture out in front so we could have comfy seats and hooked up Pandora's 4th of July mix via laptop and speakers. It was pretty cool just hanging out, letting the kids play, not worrying about too much and just being thankful that we live in a country where we can enjoy these freedoms and more.

"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better" -Albert Camus

4th of July we traditionally spend with the other Long Beach Booths. We spent the first part of the day with our friends from Baseball the Saenz's. Yummy food, time in the pool, good friends and good times.

We spent the afternoon playing and visiting and eating before shooting off fireworks. Always lots of fun!

our 4th

There was no shortage of fireworks this 4th of July. A few were leftover from last year and had... matured a little. lol. We spent our 4th with the other/older Booths (haha). We've enjoyed the last few years eating yummy bbq and blowing stuff up with Tom and D'lene. This year was no different aside from the little Booths getting bigger. We had a great time and we B's enjoyed celebrating this nation and our independence!

We love the 4th of July!

This year we were spent the 4th of July at Robert's Dad's house. We BBQ'd some JAMMIN ribs and chicken and had all sorts of super yummy food as we gathered together to celebrate this amazing nation that we are privileged to live in. It was such a fun day! Jack, Abby and Judith had a blast swimming and playing with squirt guns. They were all waiting for it to get dark enough to fireworks! We played cards and ate. Listened to music and visited and had a great time together as a family. My parents came over with us which was awesome.

Nohea knawing on a rib bone! Yummy ;)

She woke up from her nap and went after my corn. I figured I'd let her taste the cob and the texture probably felt great on her teething gums

Little Booths

Here is Nohea with her Grandpa Booth! (she loves him, if you can't tell from her bib)
He tours with "Walking with Dinosuars" and so when he gets some time off, we LOVE to spend as much time as we can with him! <3

the kiddos were READY!

Finally it was time to start with the small stuff. A few sparklers and some firecrackers. Oochie (which is Lakota for Grandmother) brought back some AWESOME stuff from their visit to the Rez in South Dakota.










we lit off some loud old fashioned firecrackers!


he LOVES the 4th of July

Front row seats :) Nohea sure did enjoy the fireworks!

3ft sparklers for the grown ups!

a little Roman Candle action with some help from Robert.


Grandpa and Oochie came by for a visit the next day before he had to leave to go back out on tour. We love the time that we get to spend with our family and can't wait til he comes home again! <3