Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone! Isn't it great to live in a free country and have our independence! Here is a special thank you to all the soldiers out there fighting for our freedom. THANK YOU!!

Because Drew's baptism was this weekend, we stayed in town for the 4th. We usually are camping or somewhere more cool than St. George, but not this year. We had a lot of fun participating in the activities the city put on for the holiday. We also had fun making yummy red, white, and blue treats.

We started the day off pretty early by watching the city parade at 8:00 a.m.

The highlight of the parade for Emily was getting all of the candy that was thrown. She does need to be a little more aggressive next time though if she wants to get more. That is okay though because she was content with the candy she did get. (I was glad she didn't get a lot too because I usually end up eating it...) After the parade, we walked down to the Vernon Worthen park to look at all of the vendor booths and play on the playground. Emily really wanted to ride on the rides at the park but I didn't have any money. I told her we could slide on the slides instead and she was okay with that. Usually the weather is nice in St. George in the mornings before the sun heats everything up but the sky was overcast making the air quite humid. After about a half hour at the park, we were sweating because of the humidity so we headed home.

For lunch, Emily, Colby and I had our own little barbecue and grilled up some hot dogs. Hot dogs are one of Emily's favorite foods. She will eat one, sometimes two, whole dogs (which is a lot for her)!

After lunch, we had a little photo shoot in our matching flag shirts. As you can see, Colby wasn't really into the whole picture thing and would not smile at all. He just gave me this grouchy stare. Emily, on the other hand, loves pictures and will smile for any camera. I think it is so funny that Colby is as big as Emily!

That night, we had a barbecue with the Farnsworth's. While there, they kind of threw me a surprise birthday party and had birthday cake. (Thanks guys!) Besides the cake, we were in charge of bringing the dessert so I made some fun patriotic dishes. They were all big hits! The flag cake was the best of all. I actually made three of these this weekend. One for Drew's birthday dinner, one for Russell's work potluck, and one for this dinner. It was so good. With the leftover strawberries, I dipped them in white chocolate and blue sugar to make them patriotic. And finally, the classic red, white, and blue Jell-O cups. All were very delicious. For the recipes, check out my website.

After dinner, we drove into town to see the big firework show.

While we were waiting for the fireworks to start, we did our own fireworks. We had Sparklers and Pop-its for Emily and Russell had his own Screamers and other fireworks. Emily thought the Sparklers were pretty fun until she accidentally touched the wrong end of the Sparkler stick and burned her finger a little. It was nothing bad; we couldn't even see where she got burned. After that, she wanted nothing to do with the fireworks. The only time she would do a Sparkler after that was when Grandma Farnsworth would hold her and the Sparkler. Poor kid.

Once the fireworks started in the sky, we were all mesmerized. Emily didn't like the booming and covered her eyes with her arm almost the whole time. Russell realized she was missing all of the fireworks and made her move her arms. Once she realized the fireworks were cool and not scary, she had a great time watching them. It was actually a pretty good show and the fireworks were amazing.

Happy Independence Day!