4th of July

I've always enjoyed the 4th of July, sitting around and watching fireworks from atop a high place, being able to feel the big boom as they explode...it totally adds to the experience. I remember when we were younger pieces of paper with gun powder with strings coming off each end. It was always fun getting the "Booby Traps", which were thin round connecting the strings to my brothers door; however, after I did that I would find them connected to my door everyday even to the point that I was afraid to open doors and hear that snap as Iflung the door open and ran for cover. The "Snap-its" were a lot of fun too, we use to throw them at other people or at their feet so that it would make them dance, we'd snap them in our fingers, and our foreheads. I think my cousin Amanda got one thrown in her ear one year, but luckily it didn't ruin her hearing (I don't remember if it was me or not who threw it in her ear but since I have bad aim, it probably was, Sorry Amanda).







On the 3rd of July we woke up early to try and get to IHOP for breakfast...ok it wasn't early, it was more like 11am by the time we got there...only to discover that it was completely packed. We decided maybe we should try to get up early on Saturday and try to make it by 9 or so. Since IHOP was packed and neither of us are a fan of Denny's, we went to get donuts intead and they did fill us up. The rest of the day consisted of playing Worms (Remember that game? It's a lot fun) on the PS3 and waiting for Jason to get home from work around 9:30pm. I did do more than that while Jason was gone but I don't remember what we did anymore. I had heard from someone in our ward that the Rio Tinto Soccer Stadium was going to launch off fireworks after the soccer game and since it is only about a mile away from us I figured it might be nice to see it. I was worried that they had already started launching fireworks by the time Jason was driving down the freeway but he assured me that he hadn't seen any fireworks yet so they may have already finished or the game hadn't even ended yet. I hurried up and made dinner (french bread sandwiches and peanut butter twix bars...yep we were eating good) and ran outside to meet Jason in the car. We took off to the Rio Tinto Stadium trying to find the perfect spot to park the car and eat dinner and be able to see the fireworks going off and we found it, in a roller skating rink parking lot that we didn't even know existed. I think parked in 4 different places just to make sure that we didn't have any trees or anything in our way but the spot we found was in a clearing of trees and we could still see the lights from the Stadium. We had our picnic dinner and watched as other people drove into the parking lot only to discover that we had already taken the best spot and they quickly took off to find another spot to park. With mosquitos being rather abundant this year we decided to stay in the car and watch the fireworks from there...which was a great idea but we missed out on the music being played in the Stadium so we opened the windows to listed to it and we let the mosquitos in anyway. When the fireworks started we were able to lay our seats all the way back and watch and feel them as they exploded. It will be something that we will defintitly have to do again next year.







On the 4th of July we did get up early enough to beat the morning rush to IHOP but we still had a 20 minute wait. I bet you can guess what I had? Jason is a little more open to trying new things. Last year for the 4th we went to Sugar House Park and watched the fireworks that were launched from the school there but we had to deal with a lot of traffic after that and decided we didn't want to do that this year. Jason had to work on Saturday until about 6:30 and since he works across the street from Sugar House Park he didn't want to come home and pick me up and then travel back to there so we figured we'd drive around a little before 10pm and find the best ones to watch. So we decided that since we had seen fireworks the night before we'll just go to the store and buy "John Adams" and watch that until 10 minutes till 10:00 and then we'll head out to Draper to see if we could catch all of them. When we went to the Draper temple for Daniel's wedding we were high enough up that we could see all of the Salt Lake Valley and figured that would be the best place to go. We found a spot on the side of the road where other people had pulled off and parked. We decided to get out of the car this time and stand by the hood of the car. We could see about 15 different firework shows going off at the same time, the only thing was that we were missing the loud booms that were coming from these various places. The good thing was that we didn't have to sit and wait in traffic trying to get back to the apartment, it was clear the entire way back.





On Sunday we had made plans with Brittany, Clay, and Maeli to have a BBQ down at their place in Provo so we finally got to see their new place. For dinner we had steaks, bakes potatos, corn on the cob, spicy chicken and Jason wanted me to make a cake with whipped cream frosting and then sprinkle chopped up pieces of Peanut Butter Twix and Reese's Peanut Butter cups on the top. We also got to show Brittany and Clay the movie 3:10 to Yuma that we just got edited and I think they liked it. However, while they were watching the movie we spent most of our time playing with Maeli. Overall, it was a great 4th of July weekend and hope to spend next year with more family and friends...


Here is a shot of one of the fireworks shows going on pretty close to where we were. This was the only picture I took because after that we were attacked by mosquitos - not as lucky this time.



Here is a video of Maeli and Jason playing around.