1st Annual Team Gibbons - 4th of July Celebration

This weekend was our 1st Annual Team Gibbons 4th of July Celebration!  Another SUCCESSFUL event for our growing blended family!

G2 hitching a piggy back ride on C4.

Events on military bases tend to be VERY structured.  At our nearby base, if you want to put up a canopy then you have to rent a spot in "tent city".  We have a white canopy which helps reflect the sun AWAY and that also has 4 walls of netting. LOVE LOVE LOVE our canopy!

We were able to have a front row seat to the parachute performance by the US Army Black Daggers!

As you can imagine --- we spent 10 minutes staring into the sky to watch the parachute show!! Thank goodness for my sunglasses!

H3 and G2 had a beat box competition and C4 wanted HELP to escape from his dad and brother.

 G2 even had a guitar solo to the music performances!

G2 made new friends and played a little Pokemon!

They even played a little football -- GREAT ACTION SHOT G2!!!

C4 and H3 played cards...

and attempted to play Boggle.... but spent 20 minutes trying to fix the boggle game and then gave up!

Once the Boggle game was fixed, H3 decided to play the game with his own rules.  In the picture below H3 is tracing the words with his fingers and counting each as he goes.  Trust me when I say his count of 85,000 was slightly exaggerated.

The fireworks started about 20 minutes earlier than the base schedule indicated.  So much for the structure of a military base!!!  Perhaps the drizzling of rain is what encouraged them to start the fireworks finale earlier...

My favorite picture of the night is the one you can barely see of all three of my boys together watching the fireworks....  #PricelessMoments #TeamGibbons

Well this is another item scratched off our 2015 Summer Bucket List.  Now onto our next item --- I wonder what it will be?!?!

We Deactivated Our Facebook Accounts!

We did it!  H3 and I deactivated our individual Facebook accounts! 

Some of you may know that H3 and I were recently married.  Since we have children from other relationships we decided to devote all of our time blending our two families together and developed a list of 10 things to do over the summer.

Once we started living together, we became obviously aware of the amount of time that we spent checking our Facebook newsfeed or new comments to posts throughout the day.

In addition, to checking updates, there were numerous intense trending topics that were popping up across timelines in the political, religion and even racial arenas. Luckily H3 and I are like minded in numerous topics and frequently talk openly and calmly about these topics. On facebook however the line of right or wrong is drawn and either you agree with others opinions (even if you don't agree) or you are WRONG. Some of these topics tend to get very intense and if you get to wrapped into it --- it can consume you.

I personally don't see some topics (politics/religion) as right or wrong.  It is about perception. I think one way and you may think another way and that is what makes us different. Running the country is like running a business. The Board of Directors of a company has a strategic plan just as each political party does.

Another reason that we are stepping away from Facebook (a "hiatus" as I call it) is to get in touch with friends and family on a more personal level.  Talking by phone, handwriting messages and sending postcards while traveling are things that we want to do more frequently.  We speak to immediate family very frequently and even send postcards to them when we are traveling but felt it was important to broaden our reach to all of our friends and family and to share it with the kids too!

I will say that we will keep our individual accounts deactivated.  Once we return to Facebook we will be using our joint facebook account that we created just before we married.

10 Things To Accomplish Summer 2015

Our family summer theme this year is --- Blending.

As some of your may know H3 and I are newlyweds.  Since we each have children from previous relationships we made the executive decision to spend the summer blending our beautiful family, haters and all!

We have given this a lot of thought and here is our list of 10 things to accomplish over this summer that we believe we help us accomplish our goal!

1. Deactivate our individual Facebook accounts

2. Decrease the amount of TV shows that we dedicate our DVR to.

3. Start a new tradition for our new family

4. Convince H3 that he needs work on his smoked brisket recipe and offer to be his outbreak money /  taste tester. :)

5. Take at least ONE trip to the beach

6. Family walk at least twice a week in the evenings - including Cadence!

7. Start AND COMPLETE a furniture project.

8. Attend our first 4th of July celebration as a blended family.

9. Play Foot Golf .

10. Go fishing as a family.

As we accomplish each of our summer goals I will add another blog post and link it to the corresponding goal.