How We Spent Our 4th of July

The night before the 4th of July, Jeremy has made it his own little tradition to sleep out on the parade route to save a family spot for the parade. This year he had Athena and Samantha sleep over with him. It was their second year to sleep out. They had a lot of fun and spent a lot of the evening playing their Nintendo DS. In the morning I brought Alexandra and Nathan to the parade.

We started out the morning by enjoying a bit of breakfast - chocolate milk and granola bars.


Then we just sat around and waited for people to arrive to the spot to watch the parade.

Athena and Samantha are also enjoying the wait and hoping their cousins arrive soon.

Samantha REALLY enjoyed her breakfast. :)

After watching the parade, we loaded up everything into the car and drove to a little set-up that is up every 4th of July. It's a colonial village and it has all kinds of really neat things to do and look at. Athena and Samantha have been asking us to go somewhere that they can learn more about the pioneers, so we spent a couple of hours here looking around. They had a lifesize model of the Mayflower. Here are the girls standing at the wheel of the Mayflower.

We then sat down for a presentation on some of the first settlers of America. We were right on the front row and the lady who was presenting picked all 3 kids to come up and help out! The thing that surprised me here is how good Nathan was in front of all those people! No fidgeting or anything.

All the kids had a chance to try on the old-fashioned armor that the pilgrims used to wear. The lady in the picture is helping to hold up the sword because it was too heavy for the kids to hold.

Nathan told us that the armor is very heavy. He wouldn't smile with it on. He just sat there with a funny look on his face.

Athena is the only one of our kids who was strong enough to hold the sword on her own.

Nathan really loved playing this game. It was a little marble game that the pilgrims used to play where they try to roll a marble into a slot in the board. We had to pry him away from it when it was time to move on. It made me wonder why we spend so much money on toys for him when it's the simple things that bring such pleasure!

Athena and Samantha really loved looking at the people who were dressed up in the village. A few times they stopped individual ladies to tell them they looked beautiful. These are the lucky ones who got to be in our picture.

Jeremy and I enjoyed walking through a display of original documents with several signatures of historical people from the U.S. In the collection was an original Book of Mormon, a signature from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and several other signatures that I can't remember right now, but it was really neat to see. As we were browsing, we had to all of a sudden leave in a hurry because Nathan and Samantha started pushing each other and fighting and they almost knocked over a framed letter from George Washington. Darn kids.
After leaving the gallery we walked through the craft show. It was very hot and way too busy so we left and bought the kids slurpees at 7-eleven. That sure raised their spirits. We tried the craft show once more after everyone had had a cold drink, but it was still too hot, so we went home to take a break and let everyone rest for a while.

Throughout this past year, Jeremy's mom gave everyone a Stadium of Fire ticket for their birthday. This is the first year we have gone into the stadium to see the show and watch the fireworks. We wanted all the kids to be well rested, so we went home and took naps. We then left our house at about 4pm and headed over to Mama and Daddy's house. Mama agreed to watch Alexandra for us because I didn't think Alexandra would enjoy the fireworks and it would be miserable for us to have here there in such a hot, tight space. It worked out very well. After dropping her off we headed back to Provo. We stopped on the way to get KFC for our picnic.

We parked, had a picnic in the shade, and headed towards the stadium. Before going in, the kids enjoyed a little bit of time playing on the grass. Nathan likes to play dead. I told him not to smile dead, so he did smile.

Beautiful pose, Athena and Samantha. Typical Nathan.

Here is the group of us at Stadium of Fire. There were 24 of us there and we all wore matching shirts, thanks to Grandma.

Just our little family.

Another highlight for us - we have always watched the sky-divers from our spot on the outside of the stadium, but we never get to see them land. It was really neat to watch the divers this year jump out of the plane, then swirl around the stadium, and finally come in for a landing on the grass in the middle of the field.

Here is our view of the field from where we were sitting.

Nathan kept covering his ears during the program. It was in anticipation of the fireworks. I kept telling him that it wasn't loud yet, so he would then uncover his ears.

He also really liked wearing the 3D glasses that were handed out. They made the fireworks look REALLY COOL. Actually, I liked watching the fireworks better without them.

The entertainment for Stadium of Fire was the Blue Man Group and Miley Cyrus. We all really liked the Blue Man Group, and none of us really cared for Miley Cyrus. Even the girls preferred the Blue Man Group and Athena asked us, "Is there a concert that has ONLY the Blue Man Group?" Right on, Athena - that's what I'm thinking. They were really fun to watch, quite entertaining. I don't understand what all the hype is about Miley Cyrus, I thought her act was horrible.

Overall, we had a very successful and fun 4th of July. I especially enjoyed learning more about the pilgrims and celebrating the freedoms we enjoy. I'm so grateful to live in this country and for the blessings I enjoy by living here.