Happy 4th of July!

Since, I'm up late again (surprise, surprise!), I thought I'd go ahead and wish everyone a Happy 4th! We went to Will's folks for the weekend for the annual 4th Picnic. Ella had lots of fun with Grace (almost 3 yrs.) and Isaiah (10 months). The last time we saw them, Grace was only 9 months old-quite the change! So, we greatly enjoyed catching up w/them. We also got to see Laurance and Kimberly's new house (they recently moved to Sumter). It's very cute, but it's just temporary; they're renting until they can build on the old homesite. Anywho, back to the picnic. I forgot my bathing suit so couldn't enjoy tubing w/Em and Kimberly, but I did remember Ella's, so she got to enjoy her first wading pool. She really had fun; she didn't mind the cold water and didn't even cry when Grace splashed her [accident, I'm sure :-)] I was very relieved she liked it since we're leaving for our vacation in a few weeks, and we plan to use the condo pool a lot. Will had fun catching up w/all his brothers and going fishing at the mill. Laurance was the only lucky one who caught something-see pic below. Even though we had a good time, it was very hard on Ella, sleeping-wise. She missed her naps all day Saturday at the mill; she refused to sleep in her portacrib-she just cried and cried. Then that night at Ma-Ma's she fought going to sleep and then kept waking up every couple of hours. Poor thing—she doesn't do well in unfamiliar settings. So, today (or technically yesterday), she slept until 10am and only woke to eat and for very brief play times. She's obviously trying to catch up on her sleep. I'm glad Will has today off-he's planning on going fishing at Lake Hartwell in a few hours, and then he'll be back for us to enjoy a family day together. Tomorrow we'll be having Dayton, Erin, and the kids over to stay with us for a few days-we're looking forward to that. Hopefully, Ella will have caught up on her sleep by then!