Star Spangled Visit

This year we had some special visitors come to spend the 4th of July holiday with us.  Mommy and Daddy's friends Drew and Heidi drove  from Ohio with their son, Jonas, and their daughter, Marley.  They arrived on Sunday, just in time to attend the Long's Park fireworks with us.  We were all decked out in our finest USA gear and we were SO excited for the canons and the fireworks!

                                        

 This is Marley, the "most adorablest baby" ever :)

 Mommy and Daddy were excited for the fireworks, too!

This was my first fireworks show - it took me about ten minutes to get used to the loud booms.  I was not a happy girl at the beginning, but I sat with Daddy for a while for some comfort and eventually fell in love with fireworks.

The next day we decided to show Jonas and Marley around Lititz.  We went to the Sturgis Pretzel Bakery, the first commercial preztel bakery in US.   This pretzel is bigger than we are!

We took a tour of the bakery, which started with a lesson on twisting pretzels!  First, we had to roll out the dough.

Then, after a few swift movements, we twisted our very own pretzel!

When we were finished, we received an "Official Pretzel Twister" certificate.

The next part of the tour was seeing the actual bakery that was built in 1861.   We pretended that we were pushing the pretzels into the oven - it was hard work!

We continued our food tour with a stop at Wilbur Chocolate.  We looked around the chocolate museum and bought some chocolate goodies.  While we were there, Heidi discovered the yummy world of Wilbur Buds (like Hershey's Kisses).  We think she likes them!  :)

We had to go home so that I could take a nap and get a break from the heat.  When we left, Heidi, Drew, Jonas and Marley enjoyed some play time at our favorite park, Lititz Springs, and made a stop at Cafe Chocolate.

Later that evening, we decided that Jonas and Marley had to try Oregon Dairy ice cream and play at the dairy playground.  I think everyone enjoyed their ice cream on this hot, hot evening!

 On Tuesday, Heidi, Drew, Jonas and Marley continued their Lancaster County tour with a trip to Dutch Wonderland.  Jonas tried out a lot of rides and splashed around Duke's Lagoon.
On the 4th of July, we decided to head to Kitchen Kettle Village for a buggy ride, lunch and some shopping.  We were SO excited for the buggy ride.  Jonas and I sat up front next to our wonderful driver, Elsie.

  This was our view :)  Sarge and Jack did a great job pulling our buggy. 

Marley loved the horses!  She got to ride up front with Elsie for a little while, too.

Our ride included a stop at an Amish drive-thru!   A lovely Amish woman had lots of baked goods and drinks available at her farm.  We bought some delicious zucchini bread and some refreshing homemade root beer and lemonade.  I couldn't stop drinking the root beer - it was SO good!

We love buggy rides!

After the buggy ride, we stopped at a cafe for lunch and met Uncle Sam.  Mommy was shocked that neither Charlotte nor I were scared of him.  Yummie the Gingerbread Man...that's another story...

After a yummy lunch, we did some shopping at the Jam and Relish Shop, the toy shop and our neighbor's pottery shop.  Everyone enjoyed the trip to Kitchen Kettle Village!

After Kitchen Kettle, we grilled some burgers for our 4th of July cook-out.  The mommies said we had to work for our dinner, so Jonas, Charlotte and I shucked the corn :)

When dinner was finished, it was still REALLY hot, so we got out the water bombs, the water guns and the hose to cool down a bit.

The daddies decided to skip the water and cool off with a few beverages and some good conversation :)

After the water battles, we got baths and then came outside to end the holiday with some sparklers and some snaps.  This was my very first sparkler.  I was a little nervous at first, but it didn't take long before I was dancing around with my sparkler just like Sissy and Jonas!

The snaps were really fun, too.  Somehow I managed to avoid throwing them on anyone else.

The evening came to a close with a lightning bug hunt.  Isn't this one cute?

We had so much fun celebrating the holiday with Heidi, Drew, Jonas and Marley.  We were happy that they made the long drive out here to visit!!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!!