When I was a child I loved to celebrate the 4th of July. It was my FAVORITE holiday! I think it had something to do with my not so secret obsession with Salt Water Taffy which got tossed out of most every float at the Riverton parade.
Not much has changed for me over the last 30 years or so. I still look forward to the 4th of July all year long and still enjoy eating as much salt water taffy as I think I can steal away from my kids without them noticing. I do however have a deeper appreciation for what the 4th of July is and why we celebrate it.
Both my Grandpa’s served in WW II. As a child, me and my other cousins, listened to countless hours of grandpa’s war stories. Somewhere along the lines listening to the stories changed from being a major drag to being fully engaged and thinking about what those experiences must have been like.
Grandpa Olson often (and I do mean often) recounted the times he slept on the beach somewhere in the South Pacific. He told us and taught us that when sleeping outdoors it is much more comfortable to sleep when you dig out a spot for your shoulders to lay in.
Grandpa Wardle often told us of the time he spent in Europe making sandwiches and coffee for the soldiers at war. He was a cook in the Army and spent most his time in France. I often think about what it must have been like to trudge alone along the streets of France when he was off duty.
Both of their experiences seem so unbelievable to me. I look at myself and the rest of their posterities and think about the lux life we lead which probably whether we realize it or not directly correlate with their experiences and sacrifice that they and most of the generations before us made. Even war now is is very different than wars we fought then, (not that I would really know). There was no facebook or video phone calls like there is now. I’m guessing, but I bet these two farm boys knew almost nothing beforehand about the places they were sent. There was no Wikipedia or internet where you could learn all about where ever you were going. I bet they didn’t even have access to an encyclopedia. (I know Grandpa Olson did after the war though, because from what I understand, he sold them for one of his many post-war jobs.)
Anyway…the point is, I have been instilled with a great love for country, state and city. I love to celebrate that love during the Fourth of July season. We are lucky enough to have 2 independence days here in Utah, so our celebration carries over to last most of the month. Plus, as if that weren’t enough celebration, by birthday also occurs in July.
So July for me if it’s celebrated correctly is one non-stop summer celebration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This year’s celebration might have been the best ever, and we’re only half done.
We started our celebration on Friday morning July 1st. Steve took the day off and slept in which he rightly deserved. I was excited about the weekend and woke up early to get a few things done. The girls woke up and found me at my station (the computer) and joined me. I immediately reminded them of the festivities that started today and to get ourselves in the spirit, we indulged ourselves by watching a series of YouTube patriotic montages the likes of Lee Greenwood and Ray Charles’ America the Beautiful. I was in tears for several of the songs watching images of our American Soldiers fight for our freedom. Alyssa seeing my emotion said, “Mom, get it now. I know why we celebrated the 4th of July, it’s to honor our soldiers!” This brought even more tears. It was a magic moment of patriotism at our house.
Steve woke up and at my request posted three of the nine American Flags we had in our yard (we are currently in possession of our wards Scout flags though some strange circumstances, too long to explain here). That along with the buntings I had mounted on my roof made this place look as patriotic and festive as I had always dreamed for the Fourth of July.
We snapped this photo right before we headed out to the Riverton Parade.
The parade delivered as it always does. We had the best seats on the whole route. After 30 years of figuring this thing out, we finally have great seats.
We always come with a multitude of friends and cousins.
The more the merrier.
We always get some super cute photos and these were no exception.
The kids were elated at the clown.
She (or he) had them all practically rolling on the ground.
Alyssa got very excited when she saw some uniformed soldiers walking down the parade route high-fiving all the kids.
After our conversation this morning she really seemed excited to appreciate this soldier and gave him the biggest high-five I’ve ever seen her give.
It was a great parade and we enjoyed every minute of it
even the long walk carrying our chairs back to the car.
The kids made quite a haul of candy seen here.
The Riverton parade, a long standing tradition of taffy. Yum.
The next morning I participated in the Dirty Girl run with some friends. After we headed over to a BBQ at my mom and dad’s.
My food contribution besides a cooler full of drinks was this flag fruit pizza.
I must say, it was delicious. Here’s the recipe I used. I give it two thumbs up.
I insisted we eat outside, but that was probably a mistake since it was a raging inferno outside. But hey…it’s the Fourth of July…if you can’t have an outdoor BBQ then, when can you? But a big "I'm sorry" to my family who had to sweat out our BBQ when we could have had a lovely and cool albeit less fun BBQ in my parent's basement.
Following the BBQ we headed down to Riverton Park to enjoy the festivities.
Since we were gone all morning it was the first time we had been to the park that day.
Alyssa was dying to ride the Ferris Wheel.
Her cousin Alayna shared this immense desire. At $4 a ride, they got to ride by themselves. It might have been the best moment of her life. I know it was the worst moment of Steve’s.
He knew that would be the last time he ever saw his daughter alive.
I ended up sending him a way to take Sunny of the Merry-Go-ROund, because he was just too nervous to watch the thing spin around with the two little girls on it alone. I was totally cool with it. I mean, look at this gentleman running the machine.
I was very confident in his ability and sound judgment. Besides this was the same guy who put the three of us (me plus these two little girls) on last year.
The whole ride, Alyssa would scream something at me each time she passed. She was desperate to communicate something to me but I couldn’t make out what it was, she zoomed past me too quickly each time. I was worried that she was scared or that she saw something dangerous or something along those lines. When the ride finally ended, I escorted the two girls off the ride and asked what they were trying to tell me, which was this… “I was trying to tell you that you wished you were on this ride, because it’s the COOLEST THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!” That’s what all the shouting was about.
I was glad Steve wasn’t there to watch her ride and scream out to me. I’m sure he would have made the man stop the ride so he could talk to her and find out what was going on. Instead, he was with Sunny on her favorite carnival ride, the merry-go-round.
It’s more his speed. If you don’t know Steve, he’s a bit on the cautious side, especially when it comes to kids.
Sunny also got to ride with her two cousins Eli and Hayden on this mega roller coaster.
They were excited and had their tickets in hand.
When it came time to ride…
It was not a letdown.
We saw this little girl at the carnival.
Although she was not happy about posing for my picture, she was so cute I had to get a picture of her. Her mom told me her name was Sunny. Very fitting, don’t you think?
After thoroughly enjoying the carnival rides
we moved over to the stage and enjoyed this awesome cover band singing all the 80’s classics.
Sunny enjoyed and boogied for everyone.
It started to get dusk so we headed over to our annual firework viewing location which I will reveal on this blog.
There we reunited with a large group of cousins and friends and enjoyed a spectacular fireworks display. For the first time ever, Sunny enjoyed the show. Even at Disneyland earlier this year, she hated the whole thing and spent the entire show hunkered down buried in the stroller. This time she clapped, laughed and cheered for each boom.
Learning from last year, we brought pajama’s for the kids to change into and headed right home after the show and both kids fell asleep in the car before we got home. Victory!
The next morning, Sunday, we headed out to church where we enjoyed singing our favorite patriotic hymns. I made a special effort to be on-time as to not miss singing the opening hymn. If only I could will myself that kind of commitment every week.
After church I made another fruit pizza, this time decorated it with Raspberries (Strawberries tasted better)
and headed over for a BBQ at the Sokol G&G’s.
We had a lovely meal followed by a fun fireworks show. I, for the first time in my life, bought some fireworks. With Bob and Hana out of town, I knew we’d have to step up. Unfortunately I know nothing about fireworks and bought kind of a lame pack. The kids still had fun though. There were oodles of smoke bombs.
The kids had a great time running through the smoke. When the kids all get diagnosed with emphazema at age 12, we’ll know why.
The pack I bought also included a lifetime supply of morning glory sparklers, which were super dangerous and kind of terrifying to watch.
Here baby…hold this open flame, it’s the Fourth of July. Not sure why this was okay today, but somehow it was.
If anyone ever sees my kids holding an open flame in the future please put it out.
Cute little cousins had a great time together.
We missed all the boys though and little Kate….Hope they had a great time at their parties.
We actually stayed over at Sokol’s house in our tent that night and had a mini campout. It was really fun. The next morning we headed over to my friend Missy’s mom’s neighborhood celebration. They live just up the street from the Sokol’s which is why we camped over.
Their celebration included a bike parade.
The kids got to decorate their bikes and ride up and down in front of the church to show off their skills and mobiles. It was SOOOOO fun to watch and participate in.
Alyssa who is a new biker was very nervous with all the kids big and little riding every kind of two, three and four wheel bikes imaginable.
She did very well and escaped without injury and without injuring anyone else.
We had a fabulous outdoor breakfast and had our faces painted by a professional painter someone hired.
The kids looked so cute,
I just couldn’t resist.
Aren’t we cute!
They also had a big pail of bubbles and tons of large bubble wands.
It was magical for the kids to see and blow these big bubbles.
So memorable.
We went in the church to use the restroom where we found a display of some primary art work each illustrating some moral.
These were our two favorite pieces.
It was a great party. We may have to make this an annual event.
One of the best Fourth of July parties I have ever attended.
The kids, especially Sunny were very zombiesk so we decided to cut and run home after the party.
Sunny promptly fell asleep in the car so we decided to go up and find where the Neff’s Canyon trailhead located somewhere inside the Olympus Cove neighborhood was. After driving around for 25 minutes Spears style, we found it.
Yep, trailhead. There was nothing we could really do to explore it since we had no water with us and Sunny was asleep. We did spot this old hollow tree stump. Once we looked closer we saw a mother woodpecker feeding three baby woodpeckers.
It was so cute! I don’t think I have ever seen a mother bird stuffing food into her little babies’ mouths with my own eyes before. It reminded me very much of dinner at my house, except these birds appeared to welcome the food. My birds act like the food will kill them.
We also spotted these sticker-covered trash cans that looked like they belonged inside Zumiez (do they still have that store?) We happen to have a sticker like that left over from our CA trip in the late winter, so we gave it to Alyssa with orders to go Wahoo the trash can, which she excitedly did.
Don’t you think that can looks way more complete now?
I sure do. Mmm…Wahoo’s, What I wouldn’t give for a #10 right now.
We headed for home again with Sunny still asleep. Once we got on the interstate I just felt wrong about this. It seemed wrong to celebrate the Fourth of July by driving home on the interstate. Steve promptly got off and we took 20th east south and decided to head up Little Cottonwood Canyon. We decided that no Fourth of July would be complete without a snowball fight.
We also knew there would be Fourth of July skiing at Snowbird so we thought we’d go see all the die-hard skiers living their dream.
As we headed up the canyon we got our first look at why so many people have drown in Utah over the last couple weeks.
Look at this river! I have never seen a river rage quite like this. The volume of water moving through here was just…awesome.
We pulled in the parking lot at snowbird and found it to be a cross between a ski resort and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville.
Look at these cats!
We parked and found some snow to play in.
I walked right over to the snow patch to go get me some to throw. Just as I stepped onto the snow, I fell into the snow up to my knees.
It really HURT! The snow was like falling on rocks, only super cold rocks. I scraped both my legs, got muddy and was bleeding a little on both legs.
Not exactly what I had in mind, but I recovered quickly and we had some fun there anyway.
It not very often you have a chance to throw snow on the Fourth of July!
After our snowball fight we noticed a skier walking down off the mountain.
Most people were riding the tram to the higher lifts and skiing up and down up top. This guy rode up, skied and hiked back down. He said he had been hiking for about 30 minutes down the mountain. He was a total ski bum. You could hardly understand a word he said.
We went into the lodge and found a huge summer party happening!
There were thousands of people there. Literally, thousands of people. The Tram was crammed full of people as was the plaza. I couldn’t believe how much was going on up there.
There is a lot of stuff to do at Snowbird, even in the summer time. We may have to venture up there with a little money in a few weeks.
After Snowbird we had to go up a little further to check out Alta.
Look at this snow bank still it’s like 10 feet deep!
This is Alta on July Fourth.
They still have snow on what looks like all their runs. This resort is technically closed, but there were several groups we saw skiing down the slopes. Hard to believe that just 15 minutes from our valley there is all this snow.
We were really hungry after our all-day adventure. We decided to head over to the Left Fork Grill Steve’s newest favorite restaurant. It’s a new diner. It’s a throwback to what diners used to be back in the day. They had awesome truck stop style waitresses and everything.
While we were waiting for our food, Sunny picket up several dozen sugar and splenda packets off the table. She said, "Are these for coughing (coffee)?" I laughed at the way she said coffee and said, "Yes, they are." She instantly began a coughing spell, and said, "See, I need one!"
It was so cute and so funny. I guess last time we were out to eat she asked if she could have one and I said, "No, they are for coffee." Only what she thought I said was coughing. She is such a little smarty pants. She remembers EVERYTHING.
The food was amazing! We ordered the kids a Chicken Schnitzel to share which came with soup.
We weren’t sure they would eat it, but the gobbled it right up! They ate great here. Maybe they learned a little from the woodpeckers we saw earlier. They just eat what their momma gave them, no questions asked.
I had this amazing pulled pork sandwich, the best I have ever had for sure. Steve had some kind of Pastrami which he said was fantastic too. We were hoping to top it off with a slice of Apple Pie. Steve is an Apple Pie expert and said the piece he’d had here last time was the best he’d ever had and it came with a slice of parmesan cheese. We were there just minutes before they closed and do you believe that on the Fourth of July they ran out of Apple Pie. Bummer.
We really did go back home at this point. We were all very weary and tired after our long weekend of celebrating. Steve and I took a nap while the kids watched a movie. After that it was fireworks 360. I can’t believe how many overhead fireworks were happening in the valley. They were more than constant. It was like the end of fireworks prohibition. Our kids were so tired that they slept through all of it.
In all, we had the most spectacular Fourth of July ever! I can hardly wait to do it all over again Pioneer style on the 24th. Long live salt water taffy, God Bless America and God Bless the Fourth of July!
