Josh, Jenn, Ashton, and Emmy…

I love the 4th of July, I mean, who doesn’t, right? There are so many fun things to do in Provo during the Freedom Festival, and most of it, it seems, requires us to wake up at unspeakable hours of the morning. Emmy and Ashton have the puffy morning eyes going on in lots of these pictures. They were troopers, though, and had a good time, even though they were tired and hungry for a few days.

We woke up early on the 3rd of July (hey, if we can start celebrating BEFORE the actual day, WHY NOT?!?!?!) to go see the hot air balloons take off. The kids loved it and it was fun to hang out with Jessi’s family. We all went to McDonald’s for breakfast afterwards, it was lots of fun.

On the 4th of July, we woke up early to run the 5K Freedom Run. (Thank you, Kyra, for lending us your stroller.) It was so much fun! Jess and Gary ran it with us and we all just took it easy and ran together and didn’t care about our times. And yes, Jessi is my sister who almost died in April and she ran the 5K. AMAZING!

The really great thing about running the 5K was that Josh and I weren’t in charge of securing a place for the family to watch the parade. (Thank you Vivian and Stephanie for taking on this crappy responsibility and doing an excellent job!)

You’ll notice that Ashton is wearing the same blue-striped shirt in pretty much all of our summer activity pictures. Yes, I had to swallow my pride and put my child’s safety first. If it hadn’t been for this shirt, who knows where Ashton might be right now. Probably marching down State Street in Lindon pretending to be playing a tuba in a band, STILL. So ever since the 4th of July Parade, whenever we go to a crowded public place where Ashton MIGHT wander off, I make him wear this shirt. Sorry, buddy.

After a little nap at home, we all went to Rob’s for a BBQ. Then the party moved on to the MTC field to hang out and wait for fireworks. We’ve been doing this since before my mission (if we are in town for the 4th) We just play Ultimate Frisbee, football, volleyball and eat lots of junk. It’s fabulous. Thank you, Uncle Gary, for the snowcones!!!

Ashton loves going to the Provo Veterans Pool. All year long, whenever we pass it, he says “There’s my pool!” The first time there this summer, he wore floaties on his arms. After an hour, he wanted them off. I was sooo scared to let him take them off, but I agreed and stood right next to him the rest of the day. The next time he just went crazy and was bobbing in and out of the water, holding his breath and loving it. By the end of that day, he would swim under the water holding his breath for a few seconds. It was amazing.

This was Emmy’s first time ever being in a pool and she was very scared. For the first hour, she was hugging me so tightly and burying her face in my shoulder. It was ALMOST like she loved me as much as she loves Josh…ALMOST. She has relaxed a lot, maybe too much, because now she tries to walk away from me and doesn’t like me to touch her.

After waiting and waiting for a nice, hot, Utah summer day, I finally decided to bust out the pool.  I was using our air mattress pump to blow it up at first but the batteries quickly died.  With no replacement batteries to be found, I sat on our stairs in the back yard and started to blow it up myself.  How hard could it really be?!?!?!  Oh my heavens!  I started out all confident and strong.  About five minutes later, I was just sitting all limp on the stairs with a huge headache, about to pass out, barely puffing into the valve, and there was no change in the size of the pool.  Then, I saw a bright light and heard a voice floating above me say “I have an air compressor.  Would you like me to blow that up for you?”  Angel, you ask?  Not technically, but YES!!!  It was our neighbor, Mike, standing on his deck next door saving my life!  So he blew the thing up in about 25 seconds.

That is Ashton’s pal, Mac.  More neighbors that I love.

Josh worked until 4 AM two nights in a row so he could come with us to the zoo one Friday (he still had to take two calls during the day and then work all day Saturday to make up for the time lost). He is an amazing dad. I have always been impressed with Josh’s ability to put what really matters first. I love him so much and we had such a fun day (except for when it was time to get off the carousel, you’ll see the “Time-Out” picture in the slideshow)

According to our pictures, the Hogle Zoo is full of all kinds of wildlife….they have…one duck.

Wowie! Time sure stinking flies when you’re having fun! I can’t believe summer is almost over! I really almost have panic attacks when I imagine it snowing and being freezing again…Anyhoo, I haven’t blogged for a long time because our computer is stuffed to the rafters and has been completely infuriating to work with. I know! It is unheard of for Josh, the geek that he is, to have such a piece of junk in his home. Buuut since the MacBook came along, poor little PC has been neglected.