Wow, I can't believe it's been 5 days and I haven't made an entry about the 4th of July fun.  We spent the weekend in Belton with my family.  On Sunday, we hooked up with Heath and Courtney Robinson and their two sons, Gage and Soren. It was quite fun to catch up with them and see how big their kids are getting. We took them to the mall and into the arcade that I think used to be Eckerds.  Watching them play ski-ball and air hockey,  with Soren barely able to see over the edge of the table was a blast. Here's the photo set of our meeting.

On Monday, the 4th, it was time for the annual Miller 4th of July Olympics!  Usually, my mom comes up with a bunch of crazy games, and we play them and declare winners and such.  This year, Andrew wanted to be in charge of the games.  He did a pretty good job.  We started with the bean bag toss, where you try to knock wooden blocks with animal pictures on them off a saw horse from across the yard. Then, we set up the casting competition, where we used a standard fishing pole equipped with a foam ball and tried to cast it into a pool.  This was quite challenging.  I got some pretty good shots of the moment when the ball hit the water.  After that, we attempted to drop quarters into various sizes containers which were submerged in water.  We all seemed to have drastically different theories about what would work, and oddly enough, most of them worked pretty well.  Most involved harnessing the rotational inertia of the quarter to prevent it from fluttering as it sank. Then, it was on to one hole of tennis ball golf, where you had to navigate a course with a tennis ball and 9 iron, which was also quite entertaining.  That was all for the outdoor games.  Next, we stacked Jenga blocks end to end to see who could get the highest.  For some reason, the girls were much better at that game.  After that there was a heated game of what we call "ball game", which is simply throwing ping pong balls in a trash can, in order to break a 3-way tie for second.  Once 4 place was settled, it ended in a sudden death round of "ball game" for second place.  The prizes were "winners choice" between:

• Some foam balls
• A pocket knife
• A vanilla scented candle
• A small stuffed monkey
• A velcro paddle and ball set

It was great fun. Check out the whole set for the games of the 3rd Julympiad.

Andrew made his patented secret recipe trail mix, which is alot like a bowl of candy.  His wife Sara made a delicious cake.  And we had lots of other goodies.  We didn't get to shoot any fireworks this year, which was unfortunate, but that just means we'll have to make up for it next year.  I hope everyone else had as much fun as we did.