July 4th Festivities

I woke up at 6 this morning to get up to go see the balloon festival with the girls, but the load of clothes I had in the dryer was not quite done, so I restarted the dryer and went back to bed.  When I woke up at 8am, it was time to get ready to go to the parade.

It's been a few years since we went to the parade, it is always hot out for the parade, and the thing gets really crowded.  Tara was tired, I ended up taking Ruth, Emma, Mary, and Kate over there, the Stake President had saved us a space. 

We were going to drive over, but I was thwarted by the footrace that always blocks off our side of town.  (I used to try to get doughnuts from the store on July 4th, but always got stuck because of the race.)  We ended up turning around and walking to the parade.  (It was only a mile.)

The girls liked the parade ok, Mary had a princess float she really liked, Emma really liked the horses, and Ruth went nuts when the giant Curious George balloon went by.

We could have gone to the little festival they have downtown, but everyone was tired.  We will have to see if the balloons and festival makes it in our plans for tomorrow.

In the afternoon, I drove the truck over to my office.  My office has a large parking lot that is an "anytime" lot, and has a portion with an unrestricted view of the stadium where the fireworks are at.  (We usually go to the church up from us, but thought we would try this on for a change.)  I parked the truck in the best spot of the lot, there was a spot right next to it that had a tree in the way of it's view.  I parked poorly in the hopes that no one would park there and we would be able to drive right up to the truck at night.

When we got there tonight, the spot next to the truck was empty.  I just had to straighten the truck out to get the van into the spot.  The girls sat in the back of the truck to watch the fireworks.  It turned out to be a fantastic view of the fireworks.  We were a quarter mile or less away from where they were lighting them off, and they looked huge.  Tara figures they are the same size as always, we are just lots closer to them there.  We've been that close before, but it was an obstructed view over at the TGI Fridays, you can't see all the fireworks.  From where we were, you could see them all.  I wanted to take a picture, but forgot the camera, the camera on my cell phone really didn't do it justice.  The girls seemed to enjoy themselves.  As expected, Ruth thought they were too loud, I put her in the cab of the truck, and she had a good old time.

When they finish our new building, the fantastic view of the fireworks might turn into a spectacular view.  We will have to see.

Afterwards, Tara got stuck in traffic coming home.  Really stuck.  It may not have been worth it to her.