4th of July with the Johns

We decided for the 4th of July to go to Leavenworth, WA. It's a little German themed town, about an hour and a half from here. Since we moved here, every one's been telling us we needed to go and check it out. (all of the signs are in "character"-Holy gas prices)

We started out at the visitor information office, to get an idea of what to do there. We were hungry and needed some lunch! The lady that worked there was super nice, and told us we could walk to everything. Then she recommended some places to eat. We decided on Cafe Christa-it had lots of German food, and some American for us wimps!

(this is the kind of picture we get when we ask our kids to take a picture)

After lunch we went over to The Gingerbread Factory! They had a clown outside juggling with fire, and making balloon animals. They also had tables set up for the kids to decorate gingerbread cookies. Landon and I snuck in to the bakery and got some cookies of our own. Yummy!

The kids really loved decorating and then of course eating their gingerbread cookies.

After that we went to the nutcracker museum. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was fun. They had thousands of nutcrackers from all over the world, in every shape and size.

(this picture is a little better, but I still got my arm cut off)

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out all of the fun little shops. The kids especially loved the Kris Kringle Christmas store, and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Shoppe-DUH!

For dinner we went to the Leavenworth Pizza Co. and then it was off to Cold Stone for dessert!

We had a blast, and will definitely go back. We've been told that they really go all out for Christmas.

This is what happens when you make 3 kids shop all day, and then put them in the car for a "long" drive.

However, since we were heading home to watch the Moses Lake city fireworks that started at 10:15pm, it wasn't all bad. Here are a few shots of our own fireworks that we did in our drive way after the city fireworks.

I think we ended up getting to bed around midnight. Definitely a 4th of July we won't soon forget!