Let Freedom Ring!

We went to Idaho for the 4th of July this year.  We headed up on the 2nd and came home on the 5th.  The night before the 4th, we had a barbecue with a lot of my dad's family.  It was fun to visit and catch up with some cousins that I hadn't seen in a while.  Afterwards, we did fireworks and the kids were all so excited.  I didn't really get any pictures that night since I was just enjoying everyone's company.

The next morning, we got outfitted in our red, white and blue and headed out to enjoy the festivities.  I love that the boys will still let me buy them matching outfits.  I keep wondering when they will complain but they actually like it, so I'll continue as long as they will let me.

We started out the day with the Rexburg parade.  We stayed for almost 2 hours and didn't even see the end of the parade.  The boys loved seeing all of the floats and running for candy.  At first, they were disappointed when they didn't get a piece of candy, but after we were there for 2 hours, they didn't even want to run for it anymore.  We were at the end of the parade route, and there were a lot of people emptying out their bags of candy.  It was fun to see my niece that I haven't seen since December.  She's changed a lot!

The rest of the afternoon, we hung out a gma & gpa Snedaker's house.  Marshall's brother Parker had a pinata he had made during school and saved it so that we could break it on the 4th.  The boys thought it was fun taking turns being blindfolded and hitting the pinata.  It was a little cooler in Idaho, but not much.  The weather was in the 90's and I spent a good portion of the day just sweating.  I missed our air conditioning that we have at home, and I really won't take that for granted the rest of this pregnancy.  It was hard not to feel tired too because of the heat.  We had dinner at Snedaker's which included steak and fruit pizza.

After dinner, we headed down to Idaho Falls for the fireworks.  We had staked out a spot the day before so we had a nice big spot for my family and Marshall's family.  Everyone showed up and we visited and the kids played while we waited for the fireworks.

The fireworks were supposed to start at 10 and when they didn't, everyone wondered what was going on.  We got word that they were looking for a man that had gone swimming in the river.  They finally started the fireworks at 11 pm and postponed the search.  The fireworks were amazing as always and lasted about 35 minutes.  I think I read somewhere that they lit off over 17,000 fireworks and it's the biggest show this side of the Mississippi.  It's a pretty amazing show and nothing that we've seen here in Utah has ever compared.   Rowan fell asleep on my lap about 5 minutes after the fireworks started.  He was so tired from playing all day long. The continued searching for the man after the fireworks show and did find him a few hours later, he had drowned.  Very sad.


I'm glad that we were able to celebrate our indepedence and be with family this year.