A Fun Fourth

This year was the first time we have ever spent the Fourth of July away from family, so we figured we'd better make a party of it! Friday night (the 3rd) we drove an hour away to see what we thought was supposed to be some spectacular firework show, but it ended up being kinda lame. In the end, we had a good time. The boys were good despite the long car ride, the long walk to the park area, the late night, and the HOT weather (the heat was unrelenting even after the sun went down). Tyler got to ride a few carnival rides, I had cold M&M's and John got his ice cream...we were all pretty happy.

Then on the morning of the fourth, we went to our ward's Fourth of July breakfast and bike parade. We had always wanted to pull off this little stunt with all of our bikes, so we figured it was now or never.

Tyler had a great time decorating the bikes and really enjoyed riding around the church parking lot a few times with the whole family. We like to call it the "Tour de Parking Lot."


Afterwards, Tyler spent some time trying out his tree climbing skills. He keeps trying to climb the scrawny trees in our yard, and on Sundays he gets in trouble for attempting this in his church clothes, so he was pretty pleased to be swinging from the branches.
(Sorry Jen. You probably had no idea that we happily helped your cute daughter join Tyler up there in the trees when she so sweetly asked...hope it doesn't make you nervous seeing this).

That evening we had three other families over to join us for a barbecue- complete with games and a slip and slide. And of course, this is about the only picture I took the whole evening. No pictures of the boys in their matching shirts, no pics of the kids having a blast on the slip and slide, no pics of the parents relaxing in the shade, but oh well, we had a great time and will always cherish the memories of our "first family fourth."