4th of July Shenanigans

We had a lot of fun stuff going on over our 4th weekend. It was SO. INCREDIBLY. AWESOME. to have my husband home for a longer weekend. Work only got in the way a little bit and the rest of the time was just us and fun. He needed it!! He helped me accomplish some stuff around the house that I cannot do alone while sporting around my baby belly and the rest was relaxation :)


We went to our friend's house to watch the Riverton parade on Friday. She lives right on the road that it comes by so we were able to just park our bums in front of her house in some lawn chairs and watch the kids go nuts about the candy. Paul and I don't care for parades at all but it was a good reason to get together with friends we haven't seen in awhile. I thought the entire parade was super lame, minus some bikers and rollerskaters. The only truly awesome thing were these jeepers - a crowd favorite:

We had our annual dinner and fireworks with my family which is always looked forward to. Sadly this year, it was so overcast and rained a little so the giant slip n slide didn't come out. Maybe we will be able to for the 24th.

We had an awesome dinner where a mean game of "Would You Rather" went on and on and on. It was pretty funny and there was some nasty, gross and funny questions and responses. Aiden, my nearly-7 year-old nephew, loved it and he would ask the silliest questions like: "Would you rather eat a burger full of worms OR nothing at all??" Ummmm, geez that's a tough one. :) Such a cutie.

My husband was where he usually is for a lot of the night: out back entertaining the kiddies. He played ball with Aiden and wrestled both him and Dallin on the tramp. The boys really do love him. It's hard not to, really.

Summer BBQ's always have some corn-on-the-cob, which we always go out and feed to our horses. It's really strange though. These batch of horses (we've had several that were sold and moved on) don't enjoy the cobs like our original older horses did. Those horses would run to you and yank them out of your hand. These horses acted like they were a pile of poo.

Our family tradition is making bombs. Amanda and Gaven are the big bomb makers and the rest of us help and mostly watch. They have it down to a science. Everything matters, down to the bottle that it goes in.

Amanda usually hammers the powder loose in the Pickalo Pete's while Gaven squeezes the powder into the bottle and completes it with firecrackers (if desired) and fuse.

And there are usually casualties:

They also make a few other different types of bombs, but these are out favorite because if you have the right bottle and the right amount of Pete's you get a really awesome bomb like this one (and usually something gets blown up with it):

I wish you could hear how big the BOOM was through the video. It was awesome. And I lost track of the bucket clear up in the sky. It went forever high.

These two dorks never stop playing and running around the entire property. We discovered that Jimmer is a weiner when it comes to fireworks. He doesn't like them at all and peed all over the place. Bacardi has never even cared. He doesn't even look up when one goes off or somethine explodes:

Xannie and Mannie being total dorks. They actually ripped the tape off of each other and they both screamed bloody murder:

My dad got a mountain of awesome fireworks when he passed through Wyoming on his way home from South Dakota. This 24 Karat, for your information, is the coolest firework. I wish I could have a picture of it but it was too dark to try. Super awesome though.

We had Paul's family over to our house for dinner as well. We ate out on our patio and it was a nice evening for it. This picture cracks me up. Paul's face is in shadow and the shadows from my twinkle lights were hitting him just perfect...in case you couldn't tell:

I remembered that I had fireworks from a couple years ago still stashed away and so it seemed a perfect time to light them up since we were all still chilling out when night came. Here are two Budd Brothers putting together our firework show with my old school ghetto fireworks:

Zoyie with her new red hair she's so proud of:

Again, Bacardi couldn't care less about the fireworks but B.J. and Hilary's wiener dog sure hates them. He's so scared that he's holding on to Hilary like a little kid. So funny:

A few days of sleeping in, accomplishing work, laying back and enjoying fireworks, food and family...that's why I love the 4th of July so much!! My favorite holiday...next to Halloween of course ;)