The Fourth Celebrations

A great lady in our ward organized once-a-week play dates for the summer.  We haven’t been to very many because of family in town or Neil related days of not getting ready for the day until after lunch, but we did make it to the Colonial Days with her and her kids up in Provo.  It was way fun!

Abbie and Mark tried out the stocks…Do you love Abbie’s stool?  Poor Spencer was too short to try it out and I didn’t trust the other kids to drop down the top of the stocks while I held him, so he didn’t get a try.  Man, can you imagine how many fewer problems we could have around if we still used these things….sitting out there in the hot sun for a day…..well, it may change a few minds.

Neil got to try out the cradle that was all muscle-made (no power tools).  Man he looks so tiny in it at almost a month old.

Abbie watched some girls make a cornhusk doll which they gave to her and she propped up in Neil’s arms…boy she thought that was funny.  She and Spencer also made a little Lavender pouch for their drawers and then went back and made one more for Jessie since she was at Shadow Mountain (a fifth grade team-building type 3 day camp).

Mark volunteered to be the water boy…boy was he SURPRISED at how heavy the water was and surprised at how much easier it was to carry once his load was balanced even though that meant there was twice as much water.

We also got to watch them fire a real cannon (minus the cannonball).  That was COOL!!  They only used 4 ounces of powder for the demo.  In war they would use 16 to 20 ounces.  They warned us first that it would be loud and then proceeded to walk us through the steps of preparing the gun and such.  As soon as Spencer heard that it would be loud he covered his ears….he HATES loud things.  Then the whole time they were explaining he kept asking me if they had shot it off yet…I kept telling him that he would know when they shot it.  And he did.   They were right - it was loud and impressive…that thing loaded for war would be scary.  YUCK…why can’t we all just be nice to each other?

Anywho, they also had some wool spinners which Mark questioned until he could almost write a book on the art of spinning wool.  He can also discourse on a trapper that he was quite impressed with.  It was a fun morning. Our new tradition with Ken’s family is a fourth of July brunch and boy is it tasty. Our awesome neighbors invited us over for a 4th of July BBQ…YUMMY!! and then we did sparklers and glow sticks until late.  Well, Ken and the kids played with the fire – I played with the camera.  The funny part was that it was actually chilly enough that you could have worn a jacket and been quite comfortable.