Like a popsicle on the Fourth of July...

We started our Independence Day festivities early in the morning. And that was saying something, since we had been up late celebrating Damon's birthday on the 2nd and Kenya's birthday on the 3rd. But my family has made a tradition of going to see the balloons at 6:00 am, and we decided to join them (all except Jeff, who found it a bit too difficult to get out of bed). He watched from the deck an hour later and saw this:

While we saw this:

Here's a family pic.

(Okay, so that's not Jeff, and it's not Allie. My brother, Eric, is holding Kyla and I am holding Kenya. I don't have a single picture of either Jeff or Allie so let's pretend).

On our way back to the car, Damon saw this cool car and wanted to pose by it.

Kyla did too.

We spent the afternoon swimming and playing water volleyball with my family, eating delicious food and spanking the Shurtz/Jeff team repeatedly. :) We spent the rest of the evening with Jeff's family in Springville eating more food and doing fireworks. I don't know why I didn't take more pictures. We must have been having too much fun. Allie fell asleep for a good hour in the van and wasn't much fun to get woken up for the fireworks. But she did claim later that it was "the best day of my life," so I think she had a good time. Just no proof of it.

Street fireworks

The picture of the day: Kyla's first time doing sparklers.