Celebrate Good Times!

Last year for Christmas, Grandpa Broadbent gave us a certificate for a hot-air balloon ride out of Park City. So Jeff and I decided to go ahead and celebrate Christmas in July. It was AMAZING!! It was so peaceful and beautiful. The scenery was incredible, and the ride was so smooth and fascinating. It was a gorgeous morning, and the balloon company was fabulous--friendly, fun, and professional. We topped out at 13 miles an hour, over 2,000 feet above ground, and we traveled several miles before landing so smoothly. Cross that off my bucket list!

No one does the Fourth of July like Utahns. I'm sorry, but they just don't. Someone recently told me that the fireman's parade in Spencerport for the fireman's carnival was one of the biggest in Rochester and that's why it draws such a large crowd. I am a New Yorker through and through, and will always be a Rochestarian, but I'm sorry. Utah parades are just bigger & better. Huge floats, beauty queens, politicians galore kissing babies, high school & community bands, jazz bands, dance groups, old cars, new cars, speed racers, dirt bikes doing wheelies, and the CANDY!!!! We must have brought home all together somewhere between 6 and 8 pounds of candy. The kids loved it. And I hear that the Pioneer Day parades are even better. Wahoo! We ended the Fourth with fireworks in Murray with cousins of course, and over the weekend we set off a few of our own with the cousins. When we went to buy our fireworks, the salesman (boy? he must have been 14) laughed along with us at our ignorance of pyrotechnics. I told him we'd only done sparklers and snakes before and even those we had to smuggle in to New York! Between the few that we got, and the stash that Uncle Bean pulled out, the girls got to see quite the show in the court outside Grandma & Grandpa's!

The other big celebration of the last week was my 40th birthday. Jeff pulled off a fabulous and so-sweet surprise birthday party. He invited every family member he could think of in the intermountain west, and any friends he could track down who live out here now. His good friends, the Lunds, cooked amazing dutch oven pork, chicken, & potatoes, and Jeff rounded out the feast with salad, watermelon, cake, and ice cream. He'd reserved this fabulous spot up a canyon with a playground for the kids, a wooded grove where he & Meg set up an awesome frisbee-golf course, and there was a lovely pavilion that sheltered us all when the rains came. Boohoo!! We had a blast though, and I feel like I entered my 40s with a bang! Such an awesome day. :)

The last week has been full of fun family times--Thanksgiving Point with cousins, backpacking to Lake Blanche as a last family outing before Jeff left, introducing Silas to ducks and swings, ice cream at Leatherby's and frozen custard at Nielsen's, a hilariously super-fun Salt Lake Bees game with the Fosters (complete with running the bases for kids, and fireworks afterwards!), splash park and ice cream with cousins, and lots and lots of sunshine.

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