For the last three years, a group of my grad school friends and I head to Lawton to spend the weekend of the 4th of July at my parents’ house.  There’s always a big country concert out at Ft. Sill that weekend, so we’ve made a tradition of attending the concert one night and then spending the next day relaxing at my parents’ pool.  Each year we have a great time, and this year might have been the best yet!

(Beware, there are a TON of photos ahead)

The concert:

Erica & Chris

John Michael & Amanda

Jarred & Sabrina

Erica, Sabrina, and me (looking like a giant compared to the other two):

Stoney LaRue!

This was the obnoxious man who was sitting a few feet in front of us:

Beer!

Great Friends. Great times.

Jarred decided we needed to swap sunglasses:

It was RIDICULOUSLY hot the whole weekend:

Merle Haggard!

Miranda Lambert!

The concert ended up being a blast!  The only downside of the night was the 1 hour wait in the parking lot to leave.

The next day we enjoyed my parents’ pool and had a great time visiting with friends and family.

John Michael’s friend Amanda made a DELICIOUS blueberry pie.

Dad grilling out.

I didn’t get a picture of all of our food, but here’s some it: grilled corn and (an awkward pic of) hot dogs!

Mojito Break!

My grandma (above) and my dad:

My friend Lani brought her family over for the evening, and it was great to get to visit with them!  Her boys enjoyed spending time with Jarred.

My cousin even graced us with his presence, looking as stylish as ever:

A picture of me doing a cannonball:

It was a PERFECT way to spend the evening.

My mom and Lani.
My mom and me!

Sabrina and JarredThe next day we took a drive out to the Wichita Mountains and up to the top of Mount Scott.  It was somewhat overcast, but still quite hot.

Jarred in deep thought (actually he was grumpy and didn’t want to smile for the camera).

Chris as King of the Mountain.

Chris wanted to get a posed picture of me, though I’m not the best at fake posing.

That night, we spontaneously planned an early birthday party for Jarred. Because it was a spontaneous party, we didn’t have a cake especially for him. Luckily, my grandma had given us a partially eaten cake earlier that day.  I’m not sure who the cake was originally for or how old it was (it didn’t taste especially fresh), but we made do with it.

It’s hard to see, but we attempted to write “Jarred” into the frosting with a knife:

Since that didn’t work too well, we resorted to a sign made courtesy of Chris.

With the help of a few random balloons that my mom had in the pantry, we put together quite a nice party, haha.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Jar-Bear!!

What a great weekend!  And on that note, I’m all caught up with my picture posting for the past month.  Hopefully I can refrain from inundating you with a kazillion pictures again in the near future!