And the Other Fourth

Happy Independence Day! Idaho Falls does a pretty great 4th of July celebration.  We started off with the traditional parade watching with our friends. The kids love the music, cheerleaders, cars, horses, but mostly the candy they get during the parade!

Afterwards, we could head downtown to the festival on the river, but we always opt to eat lunch at home and rest up for the other remaining festivities. (And make our potluck entry, which was more strawberries: this time strawberry cupcakes with red, white, and blue toppings - homemade frosting with blueberries and tiny strawberries from our garden.)

Then we head over to our neighbors' for some backyard Olympics (Norwegian horseshoes, cornhole, and KanJam), grilled fare, and libations. It's always a good time! Someone is very into brackets, so the Olympics are no joke.  Serious bragging rights are at stake!

The kids run a little wild with water balloons, trampolines, slides, etc., but they all get along pretty well. Some take a little calmer route with sidewalk chalk.

As the sun sets, it's time to head to the river for the big fireworks show. $1 million in fireworks go off every year set to music over the radio! We have a pretty nice setup at a friend's office to avoid the traffic.

And Hadley wowed the audience with her dancing down in front of the fireworks (you can see some in the background). She's usually pretty reserved around groups, but she couldn't resist. Plus, I think she picked up some new moves from the cheerleaders she saw that morning at the parade. 

Celebrating the Fourth

No, not that fourth... We celebrated Hadley's fourth birthday this weekend! It was nice that we could celebrate it on the actual day (a Saturday), and we were able to have a pretty good group despite the holiday weekend. She wanted a Hello Kitty theme, so I attempted a cake, which turned out pretty well, but nearly killed my hand.

And it's easy to enjoy summer birthdays outside, so we did a backyard water party with pools, squirt guns, bubbles, and sidewalk chalk.

Once the kids got cold, we did "Pin the Bow on Hello Kitty"

and a pinata!

The wind extinguished our outdoor candles, so we took the party inside to sing Happy Birthday. (The birthday girl had a lot more trouble blowing out her candles than the wind did!) All in all, a great party for our little girl.

And don't forget the family celebration! (We discovered that someone has difficulty giving his sibling the full spotlight or solo pictures on her special day.)

This year's notables:

• listening to her preschool teachers better than she listens to mom
• cleaning up Owen's room (if he's pre-occupied), in addition to her own, so that they can watch their shows sooner
• phasing out naps (yikes!)
• making her own friends
• becoming interested in "girly" things, like dresses, dancing, Barbies, etc.
• dancing very seriously during in-home performances (mostly jumping with a stoic face and splayed arms)
• creating her own songs (her birthday song was called "It's All About Me!")
• writing her name and counting to 39 (after that it goes to 80)
• still pronouncing Ls and Rs as Ws. I need to get this on film as much as possible before she stops doing it! Some of our favorites: "ceweal", "Hidiho" (Idaho), "cuduh" (color), "cawots", "Wittle Einsteins", "Cindawella", fork tenderloin, b-nana, b-structions, b-nastics, "gortilla" (tortilla)
• wanting to be an artist/dancer when she grows up (a change from Supergirl a few months ago)
• She measured at 3'4" (60%) and 34 lbs (40%)

Summertime Groove

We felt like we got a late start to summer with being gone a week and then sick a week, but now we are in our summer groove. There are the usual suspects like the dairy...

Playgrounds new and old...

Backyard fun...

Bear World (notice the scar! She calls it her "crack" and will tell me that her "crack needs more gasoline!" That's vaseline, which the doc told us to keep applying until it had healed. I think we are nearly there! Just slathering on the sunscreen to prevent darkening now.)...

and baseball.  Owen is doing coach-pitch this year, which is a challenging twist! He has got a hit at nearly every at-bat, so far!

For some extra parent bonus points, we found an awesome car show to take our car-aficionado to. He was in heaven!

And we took a fun family bike trip around the Snake river greenbelt here in town one beautiful afternoon. More of that rock-throwing that we're into! It takes two smalls to drive this old tractor.

The big news, though, is that the tooth fairy has been busy at our house lately. Three teeth in one week! Here's the progression. The middle picture made me laugh all day, because that one upper tooth was so loose that it moved when he talked and sometimes he'd smile at me with that tooth unknowingly twisted sideways. But he didn't want to pull it, and it fell out sometime during the night. However, no teeth were lost and the tooth fairy was able to collect all three! Hadley keeps asking if her teeth are loose yet. :)

And on a side note, our garden is producing again! Lots of arugula, sugar snap peas, radishes, spinach, oregano, parsley, and lettuce so far.  Oh, and we are up to our ears in strawberries, which we love!  So far we've made several batches of strawberry freezer jam, frozen whole berries, strawberry poke cake, strawberry watermelon popsicles, and of course tons of plain ones! I have my eyes on some strawberry lemonade and strawberry muffins next. I feel a little like Forrest Gump...

Zion National Park

Can you say "over-crowded"? That was our experience at Zion. They only allow cars in the southern part of the park, and a shuttle gets you to the rest.  That sounds great, but you have to get to the shuttle, and there was a serious dearth of parking! 

We came in through the east entrance and drove the width of the park, up and down every parking lot we came across and ended up back out of the south entrance, way down on a random road in Springdale, Utah. We decided to picnic at the park just past where we parked (by the public library for nice public restrooms too!), while we discussed whether to stay and fight the crowds or just make the drive back through to the cabin. It was hot, but Hadley still enjoyed the playground! Our kids have played on some pretty scenic playgrounds, incidentally. (Unfortunately, Owen had gotten sick the day before and stayed back at the cabin with Oma.)

We decided to go ahead and see the park, since we were there! So we had to pack up what we needed from our car, hike down the road to the city shuttle stop, ride it a few stops to the park, exit and re-enter the park on foot, walk through the visitor center to the park shuttle stop, and wait in a crazy, snaking line like we were at DisneyWorld, all in 95 degree heat. 

By that point, we opted to ride the shuttle to the end and do the Riverwalk hike up to the Narrows. The shuttle ride was enjoyable, with informative, pre-recorded messages that came on periodically for things to look for outside the windows. And my seat-mate was pretty good company.

It felt great to actually start on our hike (it had probably been almost 4 hours since we left the cabin), never mind the hundreds of fellow hikers! But the Virgin River was a welcome, cool respite from the heat, and throwing rocks into the water never gets old for some, so we took a quick detour to the water.

However, there was still a mile of trail before we got to "The Narrows", so we trekked on. It was a beautiful hike at the bottom of a towering canyon next to the river with varying lush/desert/marsh greenery.

My favorite were the weeping walls where water seeping down through the huge mountains finally reaches an impenetrable layer of rock and trickles down the rock face. Mosses, ferns, and flowers take advantage of this extra moisture.

Finally at the end of the trail where the sidewalk stops at the water! You can continue on through the water to the Narrows, but we were not prepared for that kind of a hike. Dipping our toes and ankles was enough for now. Ahhh....

After a while walking in the river (and Hadley accidentally squatting and soaking her shorts), it was time to undo the whole adventure - 2 shuttles and one long car drive back through the park. At least there was plenty more sight-seeing to do from the car! Not too much wildlife, but we did see deer, squirrels, and bighorn sheep, too. (Also, possibly spotted condors, which are hard to distinguish up in the air.)

One of the best things about the east entrance was going through the mile-long tunnel through the rock. It was so long that they had to provide "windows" periodically for glimpses of light. I think Hadley enjoyed the tunnel most of all! Although there was so much more to see, I don't think I'll be coming back anytime soon, unless I can get down there in April/May/October away from the crowds and heat.

After our Utah adventures, we headed back home, and Oma and Papa took a detour down to the Grand Canyon for a couple of days. Hadley made the trip home mostly asleep because she got a stomach bug the day before we left, and it stuck around for 4 days. Just as she got better, I got ill. Then Owen the next day, and then John. Oma and Papa came up to Idaho for a few days and got to see Owen play baseball one night, but then we all started dropping like flies, so they started their trip back home. I didn't get very many pictures of their stay with us, but I think they got some good quality time with the kids between illnesses (dancing performances, variety shows, puppy and kitty, etc.) and came away unscathed. :) Until next time!