Fourth of July Weekend

To start off our fun-filled Fourth of July weekend, we got new tires! Obviously those aren't the tires we got, but we were waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting) for them to finish working on the car, we went on a walk and found this monster tire. We found it incredibly blog appropriate and had to take a picture. So that was allll dayyyyy long on Saturday-- new tires, new brakes, same old attitude of "Man, these are way too expensive" from me.

Then, we skip to Sunday! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULYYYYYY! I l-o-v-e the 4th of July and was SO disappointed that it was on a Sunday this year (so was Valentine's Day, Jessica's birthday, my birthday, and so will Sarah's birthday and Halloween/Steph's birthday. Sorry if I missed anyone- just making my point that everything fell on a Sunday this year.. And that's on top of Easter, Mother's and Father's days--which are already on Sundays anyway).

Anyway, we went to church and found out about the COOLEST Pioneer Day camping trip that our stake is having. We are SO excited about that! Less than two weeks away!

After church we had Freddy's mom and grandma over for a small barbeque and Maria and Tiny came too! Yay! (Sorry no pictures :/)

After everyone went home we got ready to go check out the firework display put on by the city. We got to what looked like a good spot and took some pictures while we waited.

Then! We saw them do a test firework and realized that we were RIGHT behind a bunch of trees (boo...) so we had to move to a better spot. As we were driving, the show started! Aaaah! So we hurried into a parking lot that looked like where everyone was supposed to be anyway and found a spot to park. It was perfect!!

We saw some really beautiful fireworks! I tried to take pictures, but my timing was awful so all of mine turned out as just black with like, two sparks in the sky. But Freddy's an amazing photographer and got some perfect shots!

It was a surprisingly long show and they did a great job! But the only problem was that afterward, instead of just clapping, everyone started honking their horns. >:( (I have a very low tolerance level for misuse of car horns.) Seriously, there were like 200 cars that were just laying on their horns repeatedly. That lasted for probably 25 minutes or so as we were trying to leave the parking lot. I was so not happy with those drivers*.

Instead of sitting in traffic, we waiting in the parking lot until it was a little less congested and took some more pictures together. Nathan is very ticklish, especially in one particular spot on the back of his neck. So here we have Nathan getting tickled by Freddy**.

And then here we have our favorite family picture from the firework show***. :) Fun night!

On the drive home I was reminded of a funny family story:

When we were younger, we would be sitting at the dinner table waiting to eat and my dad used to make us say one thing we were grateful for before we could start eating. Standard answers were obvious-- family, friends, our house, blah blah blah. But my little brother Jason (probably about 3 or 4 at the time) used to always say that he was grateful for "fireworks!" I couldn't help but just start laughing at the thought of it. :) Tonight I was grateful for fireworks, too.

*and their dumb kids that kept playing with the car horns. My kid wasn't doing that.
**Note that you can see Nathan's teeth in those pictures! He has FOUR now! Two on top and two on bottom!
***The only problem was that some people driving past would see us taking a picture together and they would honnnnnnnnnnnnnk because it was so cute!!! Which would make the person three cars away honnnnnnnnnnnk and the car next to them honnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk honnnnnk honnnnnk! (Which would only make me madder... >:[ )