Who Knows How to Throw a Party?

This girl. Who just happens to be my best friend. Who I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to spend the 4th of July with while we were in Utah. Thanks Kara and Dallas (And happy birthday, Dal)! We had a blast! You guys are the funnest. Hands down.

A little baseball for the kids...

My guys had sooo much fun on the bounce house. Seriously, I knew they would be up late... and they were already in vacation-mode (vacation-mode = tantrum prone... verrrry tantrum prone) so I was a little nervous about how I was going to keep them entertained long enough. So when we saw the bounce house as I was pulling up... I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

Dom...having too much fun to look at me...

Miss Addie...

Dame...

Jett...

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The little kiddies had a tug-o-war. Dominic surprised the heck out of me and jumped right in!

I love the look on his face here.

The big boys decided to play too...

Next was the girls' turn.

But Rich isn't camera happy like me... so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Fireworks! Which Dom watched from inside Kara's house... with earplugs. ;)

Sparklers! Now this, he likes.

Too bad Mommy forgot to inform Damon of the fact that in addition to being super-cool and sparkly, they are, indeed, on FIRE. I snapped this shot, just as he decided to pinch the top with his fingers... ooohh, such a nice blister that made. Poor kid. Silly Mama.

Hope your 4th was awesome! :)

We R Family

Oh how we love our family! It was so good to be surrounded by such good people.

Ana, Jo and Drew, Dom and Ali

Amy and Jake, Ross, Crystal and RichElizabeth, Damon, DrewMateo, Jolene, and Goran, Ryker, Leslie and JimOlivia, JoAnn and Jim, BenjaminAmber and Matt, Donny, Angela and Crystal
We had a 4th of July BBQ in the afternoon and then we all kinda did our own things for the evening because mom and dad went to the stadium of fire to watch Rich's cousin, Ryan Innes, open for the Beach Boys!

After the BBQ we headed to Mapleton and I got to watch fireworks and celebrate with my best friend (next post) which was sooo much fun! Thanks Mom and Dad for the feast! Pretty soon you're gonna have to get a bigger house! Thank goodness we're the only out-of-towners. :)

We Didn't Start the Fire

Those are not clouds, my friends.

Utah is on fire.

No, literally.

On fire.

Holy smokes!

But all joking aside, isn't this just so sad? We drove through this on our way to Lehi (where we've been for the last couple of weeks!) and were sad to realize that it wasn't just this fire.

There were tons of them. Right there in Utah County even.

My precious Alpine Loop was closed because American Fork Canyon was burning. Another fire started in Alpine (pictured above) while we were there... threatening a lot of homes. I guess there are more than a dozen fires. Most of them were started by lightning... it's so dry. :( As we got closer to this particular one... we said adios to the beautiful blue sky as we drove into and under this blanket of thick smoke.

And this... is what the next few hours looked like.

Eerie.

And yellow.

And sad.

Now, before you get all depressed thinking about beautiful forests and mountains going up in flames... know this: we didn't let fire stop us from having a blast with our family while we were there! Stay tuned for an whole slew of posts from our vacation. Dominic and Damon had so much fun with their cousins... and we had a new adventure planned for every day. It was exhausting... but so, so great to be with the ones we love!

Thank you to everyone who fed us, entertained us, housed us, played with us, put up with us, and loved us like crazy. We love you all! (You know who you are.)

Check back for the onslaught of vacay posts...