A Day at the Beach

August 15th... Dave had the day off work so we headed to the beach at Kensington Park...

First we stopped at the little water park adjacent to the beach so that Amerah and Dave could ride this mammoth water slide...

There's my girl...

 

The bigger you are the faster the slide... as Dave found out...

Then is was on to the splash pad...

Where Amerah got into a water fight with some kid...

 

 

Then Daddy ganged up on both of them hahaha...

Since that was all the water park offered, we then headed to the beach.  Kudos to Kensington Metropark for having a wheelchair accessible walkway crossing the beach and ending just a few feet from the water!  If the water had looked a little less... umm... green... I would have gone in myself!

As it was, Dave and Amerah entered cautiously...

I love that photo... Father and daughter

They had a lot of fun swimming (although Dave says the water was icky)...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amerah hunted for shells but the beach was pretty picked over...

 

 

No stinkin' sandcastles for us... Amerah made a sand mermaid...

 

 

Terrible photo but proof that I was there...

 Last stop:  Concession stand for a snack before heading home...

I tried to get a great... smiling pic of Amerah... sigh... it took a loooooong time... and I saw way more of her tongue and the food in her mouth than I wanted haha...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very fun day!

Fourth of July PART 2

After visiting with Aunt Julie and Monica, we headed over to Evansville, Indiana to Philip and Mei's house to meet up with the Jones clan. 

Little cousin Gabrielle always has the cutest 4th of July outfits... next year I'll have to shop ahead for Amerah! 

We were disappointed that Dave's brother Gordon and his family, and his sister Susan and brother-in-law Bob were not able to make it this year.  We still had a pretty good sized gathering though!

 

We were excited to meet Mei's sister and brother-in-law who joined us from Boston this year.  Their little girl is ridiculously cute and very outgoing, little miss Donna (probably misspelling that but I'm not going to guess how to spell a Chinese name :-) was the life of the party!

 

As usual, we were well fed by my sister-in-law Mei, on scrumptious Chinese food along with some standard barbeque fare...

 

I'm thinking that Emily's ready to dig in haha

Our gracious hosts... I love this photo!

It is a Jones family tradition for the kids to raise the flag on Independence Day.  They take their responsibility very seriously...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was time for the third annual Jones monster golf tournament...

Half way through the tournament the skies opened up and it began to storm...  by the time everyone made it back to the house they were soaked!

Dave's brother Monroe was brave enough to let Amerah do his hair...

 

 

 

While the golfers waited for the storm to pass we played games...

 

 

 

 

Dave surprised me by knowing how to do some hand clapping games and demonstrating for Amerah with sister-in-law Monika...

After the tournament was over (and Dave was bummed because he lost by just a smidgen), everyone was pretty tired...

 

And just because they're cute... Emily...

Dylan...

and Tony...

We ended the 4th with a trip down to the Evansville fireworks.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I don't have any photos... but the kids were pretty excited to go!