A Summer's Worth of Fun in One Week

Taylor, Zoe, Sydney, Brandon & Amanda waiting for the parade to start!
We had a whirlwind of fun the past week and here's my attempt at summarizing!

First, the 4th of July! I love this holiday!

This year we decided to try a local favorite and attend the Kville City parade! We are lucky enough to live by the Air Force Base and we got a fly-by from 4 F-16's and a refueling plane to start the parade! Then, there were a barage of military 'floats' (I say floats, but it was the military vehicles with servicepeople on them) that followed behind the flag. It was so touching to see the crowd on their feet and applauding. We have known people in the military, but this year my thoughts were with my brother who is serving in the Air Force. I'm proud of him and his family. He is up for deployment within the year and even though that it a frightening prospect, I know everything will be ok and we are so proud of their contribution to our amazing and wonderful country.

The parade was fun. Nothing spectacular....the high school marching band, various businesses, city council, etc., but everyone throws candy! The kids are crazy out scampering around for the treats. I stood by the kids the entire parade to kind of keep guard as people crowd in. Amazing how crazy everyone gets for salt water taffy! (only a few people threw better candy). The cool thing about this parade is it turns into a HUGE water fight when it's over. Like firetrucks, those trucks that spray the ground at construction spots to keep the dust down, (like the picture belowand lots and lots of water guns. We went to the parade with our friends, the Francis' and Browns and were laughing when we first saw them in their swimsuits! They had these huge water guns that they had ordered on-line and brought about 3 coolers full of water. After the water fight started, we realized why! Brandon was so into it and thanks to Nicole for letting him borrow a water gun. Sydney sat back by me (guarding the camera) and Amanda was into getting wet!

One of the funniest moments is when Casey gave Mike his mega water gun and was all nice saying, "Hey, go give this a shot. Have fun!" So, there goes Mike playing with Amanda and squirting kids..... When all of a sudden, Casey and Al come up from behind Mike with a cooler full of water and do the "Gatorade dump" all over Mike! Nicole said Casey had been planning to get Mike like that for 2 weeks since we were the rookies to the parade this year. It was so funny and Mike conceded that he had been 'gotten'.

After the ambush!
When the water fight was officially over, we thanked our friends for a fun and wet afternoon and went to Gandolfo's for lunch and then back home to finish packing and to give Mikey a nap since he was going to be driving all night!

We were so lucky to be able to hang out with the Nelsons again! We headed to Brad's parent's house in P.G. to park the boat, and then went to Los Hermano's for dinner. We decided that we need to go on some family vacations together. We really miss hanging out with these guys. We then headed to Stadium of Fire and got great free parking thanks to our cougar buddy, Brad. Then, it turns out our seats were about 2 rows apart! It was meant to be...because how in the world would we have been able to plan that even if we knew each other was buying tickets? Anyway, Glenn Beck was the emcee...I really enjoy listening to him. He gave a very inspiring message about our country and the flag which got me crying and then another fly-by from the Air Force sent me into bawling mode.

Blue Man Group is not our family's favorite and so we ended up doing a couple of bathroom runs and a treat run. Then, the Miley Cyrus show! I wasn't super impressed, but the girls were having fun, standing up and dancing and so that's all that mattered. They were so cute!

When she was done, we decided we should hit the road to avoid traffic and turning our 6 hour drive into a 8 or 9 hour drive. We said a quick and tearful good-bye to our friends (our kids kept saying how much they miss the Nelsons) and then watched the fireworks as we walked back to the car.

Then, armed with 4 RockStar drinks, an iPod of good tunes and kids in jammies and buckled in, we headed south to Lake Powell!