4th of July...

Well yesterday was a pretty fun and relaxing day. We started our day off with heading down to Idaho Falls to watch the annual parade with all of my family. It was pretty fun, except for the fact that I was dying of heat!! It's a good thing we had just bought one of those water bottle fan things, which ended up being the hit of the day to help keep all of us cool. The parade lasted a couple hours, then we all headed over to my grandparents house for good ol' barbeque hamburgers and hot dogs, fruit and broccoli salad, chips, punch, and of course dessert!! It was really good and left me full for pretty much the rest of the day. After we all ate it was time for relaxing and nap times until the fireworks that night. It felt so nice to be in an air conditioned house for the majority of the day instead of either outside or at our apartment where it's always hot during the day. Chris went and helped my uncle prepare their master bathroom to be tiled this weekend and then everybody sat down and watched a movie, while I took a nap.

Around 7:30 or so my grandpa started making the popcorn for the firework show that Melaleuca puts on every year. He makes amazing popcorn!! Who knew that plain popcorn with just a little salt would be so good? He cooks it on the stove with a little oil and it's pretty much all of our favorite kind! My grandma also made this amazing Texas Sheet cake, which is very addicting and I'm pretty sure I gained a couple pounds just from eating so many pieces of it! lol So after popping about 3 huge paper grocery bags full of popcorn we loaded up in the cars and headed off to our usual spot at an elementary school playground & field to set up our chairs and get comfortable. The fireworks didn't start until 10, since it takes so long for it to get dark outside. Once they started they were awesome! It seems like to me that they were better this year than in previous years. It lasted for 30 minutes without any break in the action. The music they had them going to was fun and more upbeat and the fireworks went pretty high and they were a lot brighter as well. We all enjoyed them.

When it was time to head back home it was a very long process. You would think that since we were so close to the highway that it wouldn't take us that long to get home, 45 minutes tops. HA! No, it took us about 40 minutes just to make it to the highway and then another 45 minutes on top of that to get home. Traffic was horrible and of course it didn't help that the highway is down to one lane for about 1/2 of it due to construction. It was funny though because everyone started getting in the right lane before we even got close to the construction, well you know how there are always those people who go in the empty lane all the way until they can't anymore and then cut in front of all the people who had waited for EVER?! Well, there was a car a few cars in front of us that decided he was tired of that and decided to get in the left lane and just stop and keep his same pace as he was going in the other lane, like 2 mph!!! It was hilarious because all the cars that tried to drive in the left lane had to stop. A cop was the first one to drive up behind him, but it was one of those cars where the lights are all inside the car instead of up on top so the other car had no idea until the cop turned his lights on. My first thought was that he was going to get pulled over or something, but no he just went around him and called it good. Well then a few minutes later the other cars that were stopped behind him got fed up and started driving on the shoulder to pass him, it was pretty funny. I had never seen anything like it before.

We finally got home around midnight and boy were we glad that it was the weekend and that we didn't have to get up early because we were both drained. It was nice to spend time with my family though!!! This could have possibly been our last 4th of July here since we are both graduating in December. Who knows where we will be next year, but it will be a fun adventure to find out!!