The Clerkin Girls!: SeaWorld, my birthday and 4th of July

Grandma and Grandpa Clerkin took Anna and McKenna to SeaWorld the last week of June. The day they arrived in San Antonio they decided to try seeing Shamu in the cool afternoon - 106 degrees! The second day was just as warm, but they girls were wearing swimsuits and convinced Grandpa AND Grandma to let them get SOAKED by Shamu - this was definitely the girls highlight of the trip. The girls couldn't stop talking about how much fun they had and they are sleeping with their Shamu stuffed animals everynight. Thank you so much for taking them, they absolutely LOVED the trip.
We celebrated my birthday at the lake this year. There were lots of people coming down for the 4th, so since we had Friday off of work, we went down in the morning and had all day to play! We discovered that Anna and McKenna are speed demons on the waverunners. Anna would have gone 50 MPH if we let her. She used the excuse that she couldn't hold the throttle unless it was all the way down, so she found out what the pickup was like - over and over again. She completely freaked me out, so she wanted to ride with daddy because he was more fun. McKenna also like to go fast, but she wanted someone else to drive - and to not splash her in the face. On the 4th it was a little choppy on the water so that was a pretty difficult task.
We had a huge party at the lake house - Grandma C., Grandpa C., Sitto, Jiddo, Uncle Mike, Nicole, Grandma F., Aunt Jenny, Mitch, Uncle Brian, Fred and Georgette, Linda and John, Susan, Ryan and Addison, Marguerite, Jason and Ausin and us! We played on the slip and slide, jumped in the jump house, rode the wave runners, swam in the lake, watched fireworks (that were literally in our backyard) and ATE tons of yummy food - it was the best 4th we have had since Patrick and I were in DC. I forgot my camera, so a big Thank you to Patrick's parents for letting me borrow theirs for the weekend. The kiddos - Anna, McKenna, Austin, Addison and Ava all got along really well and had a really great time playing together and everyone, except Ava, enjoyed the fireworks. Ava has shown many aversions to loud noises recently - the fireworks, Beau barking, sirens and the vaccuum cleaner (that's why I don't vaccuum as much as I should...yeah, right!), but hopefully she will grow to like fireworks because I love watching them.

All in all a great weekend - thanks for a great birthday and 4th of July!