HAPPY 4th of July!!

For the 4th, we celebrated by visiting the young women at girls camp!! Their camp started on Monday and ended this morning. Last night, we all headed up to the camp to meet with them and Keola and the stake president did a short fireside. Later we ate dinner and Lillie and I headed to a hotel to hang out while Keola attended a testimony meeting with the girls. The campsite was about 2 hours from home, so we decided to spend the night at a hotel closer to the campsite.

Here's Lillie ready to go with her backpack full of essentials...dolls.

The girls camp was close to the Pennsylvania border, so we decided to take a little detour this morning and visit Boyd's Bear Country. I first heard of Boyd's Bears from Keola's grandma who has a collection of these cute stuffed teddy bears. We heard their factory was in Pennsylvania, so we took the 25 min. detour to visit.

We pulled in and saw this massive, 4 story red barn. We were excited and so was Lillie. Can't you tell from the picture!! ha ha Somehow, Lillie had too much fun at girls camp and was VERY tired this morning (sorry no pictures of camp. I totally forgot to bring out the camera).

The Sakai's celebrating the 4th at bear country...Take 1

Take 2

We came across this section of decorated gourds (like a hula ipu). They were SO cute all painted up and decorated. Meet the Santa gourds.

Keola trying to get back to his roots

The gourd tree

The black cat gourds

I actually thought this was really pretty. They cut leaf shapes out of the gourd and had a light inside shining through. Here are some with the light on and some with the light off so that you can see the cutouts.

And last, but not least, the cats and dogs.

Lillie couldn't get over how big this snowman was. If you look closely, there's a band-aid on the nose. I guess the stitches ripped in the sewing.

Bears, bears, and...

MORE bears. All dressed in super cute outfits.

On one floor they had a puppy adoption center

They also had a baby bear nursery. I'm not sure what Keola was doing...you decide.

And best of all, Boyd's Super Duper Bear Factory. We couldn't resist when Lillie kept asking if she could take one home.

Lillie is not usually a stuffed animal kind of girl, but looking at them all day must have gotten to her. When she saw this cow, she couldn't part with her. Why a cow?? Not sure. She's never shown interest in cows before. Maybe it's the book Aunty Berta just sent her.

First step, get a hardhat and time card for your work day in the bear factory.

Step 2: Choose some magic "beans" to stuff your animal. Different colors represented things like friendship, love, courage, and laughter.

Step 3: Have the women help stuff the beans in the belly.

Pour all the beans in.
Then shake, shake, shake it in the belly.
Step 4: Find a cute outfitI'm not sure why we don't have a "finished" picture of Lillie with her doll, but she absolutely loves this cow...Miss Cow or more formally known as Miss Tinkerbell. We'll have to take more pictures of her with Miss Tinkerbell later.

After the 2 hour drive home, we relaxed, ate dinner, and watched the fireworks on TV. It was a nice relaxing 4th of July. I hope you all had a fun holiday!!