family summer adventure: rodeo and patriotic fun

This past weekend's adventure was a trip up to River Valley Ranch, a Christian camp up near the Maryland line in Manchester, MD. They were having an early Independence Day celebration amd it looked like the best time to catch fireworks with the kids (as I will work early on July 5th and won't want to be out too late on the 4th). What a fun afternoon and evening we had!

The craziest thing that happened the whole day was that as we pulled in, who should pull in two cars behind us but a family that has been one of our very best friends for the past 10 years. We had no idea they were coming, and after an hour-plus drive, how funny to pull in together out of all the thousand of people there! It was great to spend our time together for the day.

at the Rodeo- with our friends boys in cowboy hats on the left!

We arrived just as the Rodeo was starting and it was fun to see the various events from bull riding to steer-wrestling (called Chute Dogging) to a crazy form of musical chairs performed on horseback, and rodeo clown stunts with exploding watermelon. We would have stayed for the whole thing but it. was. HOT.

So off we went to the "Chuckwagon" barbecue dinner under the trees, followed by letting the kids splash around in the creek that winds its way through the property.  My miniature engineer boy immediately found a group of kids building a dam across the creek, and jumped right in to help. Girlie got involved too, and they all had a great time until they were turning into little blue popsicles from the cold water.

dam engineering

There was a nice patriotic concert by the Westminster Municipal Band, and then finally--finally! It was time for the fireworks. It was a good show! The kids had seen fireworks before at Disney (in Jan 2011) and a couple other times but didn't really remember them, so they were thrilled to see the beautiful show "up close". Their mom was pretty thrilled too...nothing beats watching fireworks from a lawn chair in the beautiful outdoors. The clouds were pretty impressive too as storms skirted us on several sides but never came too close.

And thus ends a long but fun family adventure. One of my common themes for this summer so far is my kids both asleep in the back seat of the car as we travel home from our various days of fun. Its a good way to end a day.

crazy kids with glowsticks!

Happy summer adventuring, everyone! And happy Independence day!