The 4th of July

This Independence Day was one for the books!  Liv had a vocal company performance on the 3rd at Provo's freedom festival.  Auntie Kylie and Babi and Papou decided to drive up for the occasion.  The kids were all sooo anxiously excited for everyone to arrive and there were huge hugs all around when they finally did.  

After the performance, we grabbed some dinner at Zuppas and then just chilled at the house for a while.  All the kids snuggled into bed with Auntie Kylie and Liv introduced Aunt Kylie to her current favorite show, Bunk'd.

Then, Derek had purchased a few fireworks and pops for all of us to enjoy. We set out chairs on the sidewalk out front and everyone even George and and Aunt Kylie got a kick out of throwing the Pops.

Derek even impressed us all with some aerials.  Aunt Kylie came bearing gifts for everyone, some of which were some facial masks.  So, after the fireworks show we all did facials.  The boys really wanted to participate to, so I let them.  And somehow the kids knew they needed cucumbers for their eyes too.

The next morning after breakfast, we headed to Cascade Springs for a gentle hike on my injured knee.


It was a beautiful drive.  Camden insisted on sitting by Aunt Kylie and she totally obliged him and sat in the back next to him.

After the hike, we stopped at Granny's in Heber for shakes, then it was back to the house.


All the guests took naps, while Derek and I took the kids to colonial fest where the kids got to shift flour, the boys got to climb inside army tanks, Liv spun her own wool bracelet, went to school, got to watch some blacksmiths in actions, and all the kids got to dip candles.







Then, we headed back to the house for some 4th of July BBQ.  Derek had shrimp cocktail, tri-tip, brats, hamburgers, and salmon burgers.  Aunt Kylie insisted that we simply must make one of those flag cookie fruit pizzas.  It was beautifully festive and delicious, even though poor Mom got roped into making most of it for us.

That night, I got tickets for everyone to go to Stadium of Fire.  Another thing Aunt Kylie brought for everyone was these fedora hats.  All the kids and Kylie and I wore our hats to the Stadium.  I took a picture of Carter walking to the stadium in his hat.

Here's all of us sitting in the heat waiting for the show to start.

 It was an awesome concert with One Republic, they had some bike/unicycle/pogo stick stuntsters--I could see Carter getting all kinds of ideas, of course the jet plane fly over, fireworks choreographed to music, and probably my favorite part of the night was watching this parachute sky diving team start from high in the sky and come land on the the stadium grass at crazy speeds and with fireworks shooting from their feet at times.

Stadium of fire was definitely incredible, but it was a super late exhausting day and night for our kids.  We may wait for them to get a tad older before we try that again.  What else...no visit from Aunt Kylie can be complete without some selfies:

And Babi of course brought some activities for the kids.  The boys glued and painted these wooden cars.