We started off our celebrations on Friday with a family barbeque at our house. We made inside out burgers. They were super yummy, with the ooey gooey cheese on the inside. I placed all of the burgers -- some with cheddar on the inside, some with pepper jack, and two with no cheese -- on the barbeque in special places so I wouldn't forget which were the pepper cheese burgers. Then Ben helped out by putting on some hot dogs, and flipping the burgers. Except he moved them to different places, so I didn't know which burger was what. It wouldn't have been a problem, but I knew the kids wouldn't want the hot ones.
So we did our best to identify which cheese was in which burger, and we got them all right. Except one. The one I gave to my nephew, Hiram. He took a bite and asked what was so spicey in his burger. But we got it fixed, and he loved the cheddar burger that we made for him.
Grace had a lovely time talking to Grandpa. I wonder what they were discussing.
On Saturday, we decided to go down to Lake Josephine and gather "specimens" for our biosphere. We found a nice, swampy spot to see what we could catch. I had forgotten to spray us with mosquito spray, so in five seconds, we were the recipients of about 15 bug bites. Haley and I ran back to the car for the spray, and by the time we had fogged ourselves and headed back to save the boys, they were on their way back. We now have a giant pickle jar full of strange creatures.
On Sunday, we went to church, had a potluck, then came home and got ready for the fireworks. We got to the cemetary on the hill above the spot where they light off the fireworks, about two hours early. We got a great spot, and decided to walk around and look at the headstones. We found all sorts of information. We would tell the kids, "This person's name was Edward. He was fifty-seven when he died." "This lady's name was Mary, and she was 21 when she got married to Frank, and he was 36. She was 72 when she died, and he was 64." The kids were amazed at our knowledge. They asked us how we knew so much about all these people. So we showed them how to read the information of the headstones, and do the math. Grace kept shouting, "I found a dead person!"
We found a lot of little children's graves. Joey finally declared that it was making him too sad to know about the babies and little children, so please stop telling him any more. So we went back to the car and played catch, jump rope, a few games, and had a lot of fun with flashlights.
The parking lot filled up pretty quickly, and then finally, someone took the spot right next to us. We didn't know who they were, but they were yelling at each other, backing into the spot right by us. Then they decided they should leave more room on the other side for their friends, and backed up (weaving and swerving and cursing the whole time) even closer to our car. Haley named them "The Gorniky's" after the annoying family from the movie "RV". By the time it was pretty dark, a couple of families from church had shown up, including our favorite Bishop and his family, so the kids were happy to have even more playmates.
Last year we only stayed for about half of the hour-long show. This time we made it all the way to the end, although the kids were complaining about wanting to go home by the end. It was a great show, and the kids woke up at the crack of dawn the next day, of course!
We hope everybody had a great weekend and enjoyed the celebration of the independence and freedom of our country!
