Payne Family Fun: Fourth of July

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Fourth of July

Call me crazy, but I friend told me about the hot air balloon competition they have at 6:30 am in Provo on the 4th and I wanted to go. I asked Ken to set his alarm for 5:40 so I wouldn't be waking up all night wondering if it was time to get up. As it turns out, almost all the kids woke up that night and I was waking up all night to help them...oh well. We kept on sleeping and hit the snooze at first, but jumped up at 5:50 to wake up the kids.

We were dressed and out the door by about 6:15 and on our way. It was quite a sight and even though there wasn't much of a competition the kids enjoyed seeing all the balloons so close.

This one looks like it's from a story book.

This is what a hot air balloon looks likes when it's directly over your head.

We joined Ken's family for brunch. We were bringing muffins, but put too much sweet potato in them and they never did cook all the way through. So we went to a back up plan and whipped up some oatmeal muffins. We also had berry french toast and mountain man breakfast.

After brunch Mark, Jennie, Grandma, Steph and her boyfriend, McKay, and Ken played a game of Settlers while I took Spencer and Abbie home for a nap. (Which, by the way, Mark won.) I got 4 pages of Mark's new book done -- check out the side bar for the new pages.

Steph and McKay dropped by our place to drop of Jessie after the game. Mark and Ken had walked home. Steph and Abbie, Ken, Jessie and Mark played a game of Rack-o during the visit and had a lot of fun.

That night for firework time a few of the neighbors got together next door. We brought over 2 huge bowls of popcorn and glow sticks for all the kids. A couple of other neighbors lit some fireworks. It was just plain old fun.

The kids started out with glow sitck necklaces, but then wrapped a glow stick around each appendage and went streaking across the lawn. The darker it got the funnier it was to see the glowing streaks zoom past us.