The Fourth of July

So this year I really wanted to be festive and do a lot of 4th of July activities. Our ward planned on meeting at a certain intersection to watch the neighborhood parade. Todd and I had to park really far away because there were cars everywhere and we started walking. We walked for about a half hour and gave up on finding the ward. Even people that lived in the houses didn't know where the street was. Todd was hot and didn't like all the people {he's not a crowd person} and it was 10:00 a.m. so it was TJ's naptime. We decided to give up and go home and maybe we would see some of the parade on our way out. We were walking back to our car and BOOM we saw our friends the Anderson's {Summer, Brenton and little Cohen}!! Summer's sister April and her family was in town visiting for the weekend and they were there too. The Andersons are in our ward and were looking for the group too. We all decided to just stay where we were and enjoy the parade, it was starting already. It was a very juvenile parade. Pretty much any kid that had a bike could deck it out and ride in the parade. Any person owning a nice car could be in the parade too. There were a few bands and a couple firetrucks. It was hot and Todd and I forgot to bring any water

Showing everyone his flag

I had to take this quick! As you can see his hand was heading up to take it off!

For some weird reason, TJ was okay with having his hat on if it was crooked...hmmm...interesting.

Here is Summer, Cohen and Brenton. Cohen is about 5 months old. Summer and Brenton went to BYU-Idaho too! Small world.

TJ loves Cohen and after playing with Rock and being the underdog there, he likes being the older kid around Cohen. He's got to learn to be softer with him though. I always keep my eyes open.

Our cute family

Tiffany Anderson (A.) and Adam have these great friends, the Hymas', Tiffany (H.), Rhett, Taylor and Payton. For the Fourth we all went over to Tiffany H.'s parents house in Fort Worth. They live right on a lake so we played in the pool and lake and had hamburgers and hot dogs.

Tiffany A. with Rock on the jet ski

Todd and TJ in the lake. It was the warmest lake I've ever been to! I guess Texas lakes are warm as bath water.

The lake was REALLY shallow and it was shallow most of the way out. We were right by the dock and jumping in/slipping into the water was weird. It was only to our knees and warm as heck!

We went on the paddle boat.

And partway through picked up this kid that was floating around...weird I know!

No, not weird. Tiffany H. had some siblings there as well with their kids. He was one of them. :)

 All those kids got matching shirts at Old Navy for the holiday. They were all super cute and fun!

Rock and TJ, chillin' on the deck

I wish he was looking and pointing to the fireworks! We actually didn't see any fireworks this year. After dinner, it was a long drive home (1 1/2 hours) so we left to put TJ down. I heard a few fireworks going off. It was probably the first year that I didn't see any fireworks. :(

Here is a picture of the fireworks I saw in Nephi, Utah last year. I love it! Click on it to see it full size!! :)

To the dinner we brought a HUGE watermelon for everyone to eat. I don't know what went wrong but there was a TON of watermelon left. Each family that was there took home a good chunk and we were left with the rest! Todd doesn't like watermelon so it was up to me to eat it all before it went bad. Not gonna happen...

I cut up some of the watermelon and it filled a mixing bowl. I still had a ton left! I took some over to Summer and Brenton yesterday so hopefully we can all pitch in and eat this thing!