Fourth of July

Before I start this post, I want to send a big thanks to one our best friends Mike. Mike is serving our country in Afghanistan. He left a wife and three beautiful children to spend a year fighting for our country. We are so proud of him! Thanks Mike, we love you, and pray for your safety.

We love the Fourth of July at our house, the freedom festival,parades, and of course the most important thing FIREWORKS. Let me tell you how we started the festivities.

We went to the freedom festival,also know as a commercial in the park, on Thursday, it was fun for all of us.
Then we thought we would take a quick tour down University Ave. to see if there were any spots left. Duh! Are we really that dumb? of course there were not spots left on University Ave., and why would there be, the parade was due to start in 15 hours. We decided to head home, and get blankets and chairs and send Jeff off to brave the night in Provo. He left our house and got to Provo by 8:00 and there were already a few people "wandering" around waiting until it was okay to claim their spots.They weren't sitting yet because the rules said you couldn't get a spot until 6:00 am so Jeff had a long wait ahead of him.

12:00 comes around and some nice older lady approaches Jeff and asks him if he plans on staying the whole night. Jeff says yes and the lady asks him if he will just put her tarp down when he puts his down, Jeff being the nice guy,(or idiot) that his is says "but of course total stranger let me help you". So now not only does he have our stuff he has ,the nice older ladies stuff as well.

3:00 Jeff is able to claim our land, and sets the nice older lady's stuff up next to ours, when all of a sudden,(said in a kind of eerie voice) a few ladies come and sit smack dab in the middle of the nice older lady's tarp.WHHAAAT?
Jeff politely asks them what their doing and they said that the rules said they could sit anywhere they wanted as long as no one was there, so they were taking this spot. Jeff explained to them that he was saving it for a nice older lady, and that there were plenty of other spots that they could move to. Well One lady went on to say how she's not from Utah but every time she comes to Utah someone is saving someone else a seat, like it happened to her once at a movie and she just sat any ways.Jeff trys again to persuade them to move,but that doesn't fly with them, so they decide to flag down an Officer of the law (aka. Provo Police). They explain the situation and the cop tells Jeff that they are technically right and that Jeff should move the tarp. GRRRR.
The "Seat Stealer" (I hope she's not one of your aunts or mother in laws, and if she is you should teach her some manners.)

So Jeff finds the nice older lady a spot about 15 feet away, and saves that for her. He comes back to his blanket so no one takes his spot and over hears the spot stealer's talking about the talk she had given in church on Sunday. WHHHATT? They had given talk in Church on Sunday and stole a seat from some one in such a rude manner, not even a week later? Hypocrite!

Jeff tells me the story and I say "what you should have said" do you ever find yourself doing that after the fact? Sorry back to business "what you have said, is if your following the rules so well than you can't reserve your seat until 6:00 like the rules say, so your either sitting in a different spot now or waiting for this spot and seeing if it is unoccupied at 6:00." man, that would have shut her up.

Needless to say everyone got a spot. The nice older lady who Jeff saved a spot for, but really shouldn't have brought us donuts and juice.

We all loved the parade and the kids enjoyed the spending the day with their cousins, all and all a very fun day.

Taylor and his cousin Hailey

Me and Chase

Blowing bubbles with Hailey