July 4th Festivities!

Here in Utah, July 4th fesitivities last a whole month with many activities - we, of course, just went to the ones our kids would enjoy: First off...Children's parade. The kids get to get all dressed up in patriotic colors and walk or ride in a 6 block parade - perfect lenghth for the kids. By the end of it, the girls were getting real tired (Christopher fell asleep in his car), and the only thing that would keep them going was knowing they would recieve popsicles at the end. They also handed out wrist bands and pins to everyone...the girls thought that was really cool. Their favorite part has to be a tie between riding on dad's shoulders and picking up a piece of candy off the road when others had thrown them into the audience (actually...it was probably the candy they liked most)! We all had a lot of fun!

"Check me out in my cool car!"

This was really cute! They had long wagon trains made out of little wagons with stuffed animals riding in it.




FHE FUN! We had a patriotic FHE where Ben dressed up in uniform (our made up one) and we had a flag ceremony with the pledge of allegance and sang the national anthem. The girls thought it was really cool. We are so glad we live in this free country...and we really want our girls to understand how lucky we are.

Next on the list was attending the Patriotic Fireside held at BYU. Ok, this was just for the grown-ups. The speaker was the popular conservative radio & CNN talk show host...Glenn Beck (he's also LDS). It was really great of course.

Actual July 4th! To start off the day, we went to the parade (we were just the spectators this time). There was thousands of people at this parade...pretty impressive. Of course, the girls favorite part was watching all the princesses. When we got home, Teya had a serious talk with us. She said she wanted to be a real princess. Oh, boy...we have our work cut out for us.

For the afternoon fun...we of course went swimming (the kids favorite thing to do). They are beginning to get really good at it. With their floaties on, they can go anywhere.



Kali is not afarid of the water, she loves to jump in and get her face all wet.



While we went swimming, Ben was hard at work...I might add some real dirty work!


That evening, we had a wonderful dinner and fireworks. Our fireworks pretty much consisted of pop its and sparklers. We did have some snakes and flowers, but it freaked Kali out. Teya and dad went and watched the fireworks from a hillside.





Our last event was the following morning at 6:30 AM (that would explain all the tired looks). We got to see all these hot air balloons take off...so cool! All-in-all...great 4th of July!