Happy Independence Day

Ok, so I know its several days past July 4th, but I figured late is better than never. So for July 4th we spent it with my parents. For as long as I can remember, we have always celebrated my dad's birthdays on July 4th even though his real birthday is on the 3rd. We have parties with lots of people and food and fireworks at our house. So it was a double celebration for us. So we started out our celebrations with hamburgers off the grill. It was a small event this year with just immediate family us, and my dad's sister's family, nothing snazzy. After dinner, we raided our neighbors pool. They are gone for the entire month of July so they gave us permission to use their pool. With all these triple digit days we have been having (and it looks like its going to stay in the triple digits for the rest of summer) we went swimming before we set off fireworks.

For those of you who don't know, my dog absolutely HATES water, always has for some reason, he doesn't even like to take baths. But, we torture him and bring him into the pool with us every time. Dad found that he can swim with a noodle and likes to make fun of him for how funny looking it is. But needless to say, Kaleb hates the water

It was nice being able to get into the water and just be able to chill out with family and cool off from the heat.

After swimming, we start setting up for the fireworks. First off are the sparklers, starting easy and then working our way up to the big ones. Most of the sparklers we used are left over from Jared and my wedding, I think mom was happy to finally be done with them and used up.

As the night progressed, Jared found a cool setting on our Nikon D90 camera. It took slow pictures to create these awesome pictures of extended lights from the sparklers. Needless to say, it was the highlight of the night.

It started of with just easy stuff in the beginning with squiggles and curly-q's.

Next came the roman candles

Then we were ready for some bigger fireworks and ka-booms. I just love fireworks! Jared managed to get some really sweet photos of some of them.

As mentioned before, the delay feature on our camera became the hit of the night. We started getting creative and spell out words. Kalee brought some friends over and they started to spell different words.

Love

BYUI

They got my cousin Walter into the mix.

July 4

Dad and Walter were the main firework setter offer's, the girls were a little nervous lighting some of the bigger fireworks.

I look forward to the 4th of July every year, it is such a great holiday and being able to spend it with friends and family is always great. Next year, we will be able to spend it with our newest member of the family, Easton. I hope he will enjoy it as much as my family does.