4th of July

Our 4th of July started with a bang - literally. Oakley City shoots off a canon (or fireworks? whatever it is, it's LOUD) at 5:00 AM every 4th of July. Then they take it around the town shooting it off every few minutes, just to make sure everyone hears it. I counted 7 blasts within half an hour. So of course there was NO chance of getting back to sleep UGH! Luckily the kids slept through it.
First on our agenda for the day's celebrations was the parade of course. Our tradition is to watch the parade from the Haakenson's house (the family of one of Sam's high school buddies) - where they go to the trouble of setting up chairs and shade for us and always making something yummy for us to eat. It's one of the few times a year we know we will be seeing them and we look forward to it. Part of Sam's family usually joins us there too.

Kaitlyn had a great time standing by the road with Mix and JD grabbing all the candy. She also made a point of waving at all the people in the parade as they went by. It was so cute!
Tyler, after falling down a few times on the slope of the drivway settled on my lap to watch the parade and snack on the candy Kaitlyn collected.
After the parade it was a quick stop at the house to collect our supplies (including a change of clothes since his nice white shirt which hadn't stayed white 5 minutes into the parade. Gma Jackson said we should term his look "red, white and BOY" LOL) then we were off to my parent's house for lunch and playing around.

Wyatt was feeding grain to the horses, so of course Kaitlyn had to help out. And there is Eddy, who we discovered was great with the kids especially Kaitlyn, looking out for her.
Mom had plotted against my dad - who LOVES water fights - for the boys to attach him with water guns and lunch ended with a splash.

The kids then changed into their swimming suites for more water fighting. We then moved on to launching water balloons with the slingshot at tagets in the field. Mom decided that wasn't exciting enough so she took the 4 wheeler out to be a human target, and Sam joined her out there after a while. We weren't accurate enough to hit them though :( We also did water gun target shooting. Then we loaded the kids in the car to continue our partying with Sam's family. The whole gang (plus some!) was gathered for cooking over the campfire (most of them were camping out in tents on the lawn that night) and waiting for it to get dark. To pass the time most of the kids went out on Colette's boat (Sam's sister), but Kaitlyn was content to play in the small pool at the house. Tyler doesn't like to get in the wading pools (I still can't figure out why) but he insisted that we strip him down so he could play with the pool toys.


With dinner eaten and marshmallows roasted, the night was rounded out by a nice firework show.
It was a great holiday. Now I will be content to take it easy today and try to rest up because I'm exhausted - the kids don't seem any the worse for wear from the late nights though!
I hope everyone else had a wonderful 4th of July too!