Happy 4th of July

Our 4th of July was great but it was one of the longest days of our lives LOL! We woke at 5:30 am so we could be down to Provo by 6:30. (It's a good 30 minute drive) When we got there (a little late by the way) there wasn't a balloon in the sky. Uh oh. We had seen the clouds, we had passed through a couple of spots of rain but we never thought they would cancel. We walked around for a while and heard murmurings of bad weather making it impossible for the balloons to race but then spotted this! We were so excited. There was hope after all! 

Meanwhile we searched out the Star Wars figures that were there to serve as crowd control for the Darth Vader balloon. 

More an more balloons were inflating. 

Before long we were staring up the backside of a giant pig! 

This balloon went up (it was still tethered to the ground) waving the American Flag while they played the Star Spangled Banner. 

Before long it was announced that Darth Vader was going up. That is what everyone was there to see. It was new this year and drawing quite the crowds. 

Andrew was totally digging all the characters. Too bad he looks like he just rolled out of bed. (Well I guess he had)

This balloon was massive. It was also from Belgium. I wish they had been handing out chocolate. 

Seriously, how cool is this thing? 

There were balloons popping up left and right. We were getting excited. 

All of a sudden something happened. A mild wind kicked up, we couldn't even feel it on the ground. That was all it took though. All the balloons blew over. They were falling over on top of the crowd. It wasn't long before they were packing everything back up and putting it away. Oh well. There's always next year! The kids actually did really good getting up so it's only going to be easier from here on out. We made our way up to Einstein Bagels. The kids have decided this is a tradition that we must do after the balloon festival. 

We took a nap, went to In N Out for lunch, Emma and I did a little shopping in American Fork and Andrew and Paul went to see Transformers 3. When they got home we had a BBQ where I got to use the $1 table cloth and .50 cent placemats I had found while shopping with Emma. 

Andrew tried to smoke us out with smoke balls. 

We did more fireworks in the front yard with the neighbors until it was close to dark. At that point we went to the kids' school where we had dropped off chairs and a blanket earlier and waited for the fireworks to start. We brought Jenna with us. It was drizzling on and off all evening long. It was really sort of weird but nice at the same time. It wasn't hot! 

The fireworks started off slow (Maybe because of the rain?) but then they really got going and went for 20 minutes. It was an awesome show. We really enjoyed it. I loved being near so many people listening to all the oohs and ahs. 

We didn't get into bed until well after 11:00 pm. That makes for a very very long day. Now for Hipsta prints. 

Emma and I got frozen hot chocolates at Smart Cookie. They were good but not nearly as good as the one we got at Serendipity.

Emma liked it though. 

They had a ton of almond cookies. I was so happy!