4th of July Festivities

I like the 4th of July. But it's never been a holiday I've gotten super excited about. But this year I just realized that it's a lot of fun and it's cool and worth getting excited about and celebrating! America is amazing and I certainly feel pretty blessed and lucky to have the life I do. We didn't really do anything much different than in years past. We went to Eaglewood - for the 4th year in a row! That's definitely a tradition I love and look forward to. There was a little hesitation about going just cause the crowds and traffic leaving have always been kind of a pain. But I'm SOO glad we went. It was as fun as it always is and our getaway was smooth sailing! My dad and Laura and Dallin came and I invited my friend Laura and her husband and kids came too. It's WAY more fun when the kids have other kids to play with and they all got along soo good. The weather was fabulous. We ate lots of food and the fireworks were awesome.

And all Greta wanted to do was to hold Rory ;)

Cherry pit braces

I kind of hesitated on the parade thing. My kids like them and we had fun at the Handcart Days one in Bountiful last year - but it was going to be a few days after Greta's surgery and I didn't think she'd want to go then. So last minute we decided to walk over to the route in Layton. People had been saving spots for 2 days and we obviously hadn't. So we squeezed in on a corner and it worked out okay but next year I don't know if we'll do it that way. The kids had fun. But it was hot.

They threw out popsicles at first and my anal mom problem came out and I took Lottie's away because she was getting it EVERYWHERE. She got so mad and then ended up tipping over in her chair and you could hear the conk over the incredibly loud police sirens. Oopsies. She got a HUGE goose egg but I think all is well.

Her hands (heart eyes :) )

Hope these guys stay friends for a long long time!

The afternoon of the 4th we had big plans of a big party and bbq at Heather's house. Volleyball, swimming pool, park, yard games, etc. I was SOO excited. The weather had different plans. It SUCKED. It was only supposed to be like 30% chance of rain. It started off really nice and we were hanging out having a good time when the clouds roared in and it DUMPED. We scrambled to get everything inside. Luckily most of us had eaten and such. So we put on a movie, got out Austin's toy's and let the kids play inside. And waited for some calm between the storms to try to set off all the fireworks my dad and Tanner had accumulated.

We did some smoke bombs and sparklers and some other small things while it wasn't too bad, then went inside to wait for it to get dark to do a bunch of the other big ones.

Ben and Julie had gone home. It cleared up pretty good. Heather got out the cotton candy machine. People set up chairs for the show and we got going. It was really fun. We had some REALLY cool fireworks. The kids thought they were cool but kind of loud and the pyro boys, dad and Tanner were having fun doing them. It did start raining again on us and so cotton candy got put away - so dumb. The rain was REALLY annoying.

Pretty soon after this moment we had a bit of a party foul. One of the fireworks apparently split in half. I remember seeing one shoot off down the street and thought that was weird and then RIGHT after one went into the yard and sparks came flying down on top of everyone and the kids. They all started crying and during that chaos another one shot right in the middle of Harvey and Logan and blew up. It was INSANE. Kids were grabbed and taken inside. Everyone was screaming and crying. Logan's chair had a huge hole in it. His bottom got some abrasions/bruises and maybe burns and Harvey got a big burn/abrasion on his right arm. Ugh. It really was pretty awful at the time. Emotions were high. I felt awful. Luckily no one really got hurt - it could have been SO much worse. But knowing how bad my dad and mom felt about what happened was the worst. He was so excited about those fireworks and we were all having so much fun. It really ended the kind of bummer day very poorly. But - we all survived. Harvey and Logan were fine the next day - emotionally and physically. Apologies were sent that night. We will do fireworks again and it didn't defeat us. We will FOR SURE take better precautions to make sure they can't tip or split or go haywire. It's nice that time can heal some of those emotions and "wounds". I'm so grateful nothing worse happened and (as I type this it's the 24th of July) Tanner is going to set off the rest of our fireworks and our kids are still going to love them (although Lottie is a little unnerved by the loud noises still I think). Nothing more time and no more injuries can't fix!