Long Saturday

We had a fun 4th of July yesterday. The 4th always starts out early and yesterday I was up at 4:00am trying to get food prepared before I went to the church. We are on the activities committee and I was in charge of decorating and advertising for our July 4th Breakfast. It's our easiest activity to plan and our shortest activity. We meet at 6am to decorate and cut up fruit, the program starts at 7am and is usually over by 8am. R took the kids to Main Street to save us a shady spot for the parade while I cleaned up.

The parade started about 9am and I have to be there our time to see the F16 do their fly-by (this is the best part of the parade). S wasn't with us so it was Z and A chasing after the candy thrown our way. A had so much fun yelling "Hi" to alll the floats passing us and running for the candy. R and Z would drop candy by her just to watch her get excited about the candy and pick it up. It was weird not having S there and when she came home from Logan she was bummed about missing the parade (we had gone very year since we moved here).

Wednesday I met Allen in Brigham City and he took S home to Logan for a two night sleepover. My other sister Katie in Colorado let her daughter Mariah stay with Tiffi in Logan so all the girls were together and Tiffi and Allen thought they could handle one more. S loved it, but Allen and Tiffi were worn out from two extra kiddos helping to make messes at their house.

Patty and Brian came down in the afternoon and the Tiffi and Allen arrived. We just ate and the kids swam while the grownups visited and ate. We have a huge cotton tree in our neighbors back yard and it snows in our yard all through June although this year we are still getting the cotton snow and it was bad yesterday. The kids swam for a few hours and then played while they tried to patiently wait for firewords. The dads also took them out on the 4wheelers for some practice and fun. We just lit fireworks our front along with some neighbors and the kids love it.

I was so tired when we all finally went to bed about 11:30pm, what a long day. I had hoped for a nap but it just didn't happen. We had an early morning this morning and it was so hard to get up.

R made arrangements for Sam and Mariah to take the ATV test in Kamas which was this morning at 9am. They passed with flying colors and will now be legal on the 4wheelers when we go camping. To celebrate we took them to Teddy Bear Stuff'n Factory to pick out animals to outfit. We took six kids and they all picked out animals and an outfit and let me tell you it was an experience. Two of the girls had the hardest time deciding on an outfit and I finally had to tell them you can only try 2 more outfits on your animals and you have 5 minutes. It was funny to see them all leaving the store with the backpack stuffed with an animal.

The kids are swimming again and Tiffi and Allen went back to Logan. We are now the parents of six kids until Monday. I'll let you know how we survive.