Happy Birthday United States of America!

As we watched this week and our friends all over the world celebrated US Independence Day it was fun to see the different versions. Our version was full of family time.

We started the morning at Provo City's Freedom Festival parade. It was hot, but still fun. Some of the floats were done exceptionally. The parade was 1.5 hours, which is a bit shorter than I expected. Even the 24th of July parade in Beaver is longer than that. It was fun to see some firsts in the parade--the first female mayor elected in Provo was opening the experience and then the parade committee allowed LGBTQ groups to join for the first time. For being a "conservative small town" in Utah this was a BIG deal.

We were hot by the time the parade ended so we bought some shave ice and went home to gather our swimming stuff. We ended up at Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon. It was beautiful up there. We had to share the beach with a few hundred of our closest friends, but it was still fun. We dug holes in the sand, floated on tubes and enjoyed the people watching opportunities! Koala Bear of course loved all the dogs. She was giggle and laugh as they jumped into the water to chase balls or floats.

One girl had her dog on a small kayak with her, I had just taken Koala Bear out of the cold water to warm up (she would stay in there all day if she could...even if her legs were numb!) and heard some parents yelling in panic. I turned to look and saw that the teenage girl was trying to hold onto the capsized kayak while a horrified dog was clawing to climb on top of her. I ran over and swam out to them and held them both up to the shore. They made it safe. After I was back on shore I realized a few things-1 I had left Koala Bear to save someone else's daughter...luckily I had just given her a Birthday Cake Oreo and she was still sitting there watching the action with mild interest while she ate. 2-I am not sure why the two parents stood on the bank and just yelled. If my child was looking close to being drowned by a dog I can tell you I would NOT be standing on the shore yelling instructions....some people...

Lucky Dragon and I swam across the reservoir and he saw the older kids jumping off the cliffs and wanted to join. So we jumped off a part that was about 10 feet. We climbed back up and he jumped off a 20 foot section! I was so proud of him. We sat up on the top and watched others jump and he became more and more proud of himself as he realized that even other adults would not dare do what he did.

 

In the evening we set off fireworks with our neighbors. It was unplanned. But out house backs up to a green space park and all the neighbors gathered there with their fireworks. We had an amazing display and then we could watch fireworks from our back lawn across Utah Lake. We could see them from Lehi in the North all the way down to Spanish Fork in the South. It was a spectacular evening!

We had purchased fireworks for a place in Lehi called "Some Dude's Fireworks" and I was unsure of how they would turn out because they were so cheap compared to the other people selling fireworks. (Less than half the price) However, they were amazing! They told us the guy did not want to spend so much on fireworks from the large companies so he started buying them to sell himself. We will be going back for our 24th of July fireworks.

So thankful for all those who have given so much to allow us these freedoms. And most of all for a chance to be a family.