happy birthday america (3ish weeks late)

we're still catching up...

this 4th of july was tons of fun for me! it's the first 4th i haven't spent with my family, but it was fun spending the day with dallin's extended family. lots of traditions that i got to be a part of and definitely some adventure thrown in too.

we started the day out by watching the murray parade. it comes right by our apartment, so we didn't have to get up early to get spots, all we did was put camping chairs out on the porch and watch!

next we went to jake and tyra's for a water fight. i'll admit, i was NOT excited for this. running around in a backyard just spraying each other in the face did not really sound like fun. but dallin promised me that it would be awesome, so we over. i was in for a HUGE surprise. this was no ordinary backyard waterfight. this was well organized guerilla warfare. there were two teams on different blocks. each team had a truck had all sorts of weapons. there were water buckets, water guns, balloons, a baby pool, garbage cans filled to the max, water sticks, and even an old fire extinguisher filled up with water! we attacked back and forth for a few rounds, and got a lot of the neighborhood involved before we called it quits. i think every single person was soaking wet. it was so much fun!

after the waterfight we just hung out at the hawkins for a while. we had pizza for lunch, talked about michael jackson, you know, the usual. the dallin and i went home to change into dry clothes and then we went to see kira at smart cookie. i had some frozen hot chocolate (frohocho- thanks katy b) and we ate some really great cookies.


after that we headed back to the hawkins. after some great food (especially the guac that dal & i made) and some more visiting with the cousins and aunts and uncles, we watched a great firework show. i'd say it was even better than the stadium of fire.

happy birthday america! i'm so grateful that i live in the U.S. and have the freedoms that i do. i am so blessed to live where i want, to worship the way i believe, to have men and women that are willing to fight for our country and so much more. thank you everyone!