4th of July weekend, 2020

 So our Independence Day festivities began with a day at Bear Lake with lots of cousins and a pink flamingo.

Kami and Leo stayed at our house that night, and they brought some fireworks--some of those Wyoming kind!-- to set off, which was fun.

That's Brett- it looks like he's running through the explosion.  :)

Then the next day, ALL the families in Utah (and Wyoming) gathered at my mom's house for our own special Independence Day Parade.  It was so awesome.  I waited to the last minute of course, but the morning of the parade I was trying to get cool stuff together, like pom poms (made out of plastic bags because this was last minute, remember) and I had remembered to buy some streamers luckily, and the kids were putting them on their bikes.  And then I regretted not buying something cute and fun and red, white, and blue for Navy to wear, so I super hurriedly sewed her a skirt out of things I had in the house and made a weird necklace with trimmings and she looked super fun and festive!

Brett had to be on-the-spot to add things to bikes and we even got a couple cards from my mom to attach so they would ping through the spokes and make it sound cool.  (I don't know how to describe that very well.  Do you know what I'm talking about?)

Navy made herself a paper crown and a torch and wore a flapper dress to be the Statue of Liberty and I thought that was so fantastic!!!

Okay, so then everyone arrived, and we had an opening (prayer maybe? don't remember for sure) and Miriam sang the national anthem, and everyone lined up and started the parade.  We had a trombone player (Anders), Lynnaea did a dance routine, we had bikes and wagons and balloons and flags and streamers and kids dressed up, and I was honestly so DELIGHTED by all of this.  I mean, there were no official parades or celebrations because of Covid, but honestly, our home-made parade was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I was so impressed and just charmed to no end by the whole thing.

Then we had races, an egg toss, and a softball throwing competition (which I will report in all humility that in our age brackets, I won, Talmage won, Orrin won, and Wyatt won).

And then dinner, of course, with hamburgers and homemade rootbeer by Dad!

Then there was just general hanging out and merriment, and some slip n' sliding.

And we finished the day off with lots of fireworks.  Sheesh, what an utterly fantastic day.