4th of July

Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit over the 4th of July weekend. The weather was perfect - 75 to 80 degrees and no rain - and we kept ourselves busy with fun activities and good food. The day before the Fourth, we spent most of the day at Cowabunga Bay, a new waterpark that opened up a few weeks ago down the street from our house. It's a giant water play structure with a lazy river next to it.

When you're on the structure itself, it's impossible to stay dry - it's covered with buckets, sprayers, hoses, showers, etc. Everywhere you turn, you get drenched, usually not even knowing where the water is coming from - especially when a kid finds the perfect perch next to a water bucket and keeps dumping it's contents on unsuspecting people below. Dumb kid.

Here's "Crampa" and Grandma!

Cowabunga Bay has multiple open and closed slides (all of them produce perfect wedgies when you hit the bottom), but the main attraction is the two GIANT buckets that dump hundreds of gallons of water every five minutes. People line up and wait to get pummeled by the enormous amount of water. We decided to try it once - it took the kids quite a bit of convincing to put themselves in the line of fire (water).

We left Cowabunga Bay in the afternoon waterlogged and sunburned and went home to get cleaned up. We made our way out to the west valley to attend the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. The temple was beautiful, of course. We noted that the theme throughout the temple, as far as interior design goes, is gold and crystal. Very pretty.

Here, you can see where the angel Moroni was struck by lightning a few weeks ago.


This is the view of the Draper Temple from the Oquirrh Temple.



For the 4th of July, we had a picnic in American Fork Canyon. We ate steak and roasted marshmallows as we enjoyed the cool mountain air. We played some cards and the kids played "monkey in the middle".







If it looks like Gillian's saying, "What's that over there?" so that she could distract Henry and throw the ball over his head without him noticing, you're right. That's exactly what she's doing.


We made it back into town right in time for the the City of Sandy fireworks show. Luckily, our friends, the Sohms, arrived first and saved us some blanket room. I like watching them from Jordan High School because it looks like the fireworks are exploding over the Jordan River Temple. This year, we could see the Oquirrh Mountain Temple as well. Pretty cool.





On Sunday, we spent the day in Layton with my uncle Anthony and his family. Kathy and K.C. joined us from South Jordan and brought Grandma Jackson (since she was staying with them for the weekend). Pam and Kelvin also drove down from Idaho Falls to join the crowd. It was fun to spend time with some of my "Utah" cousins and get to know them better. We had a good time.










When we got back to our house, it was just dark enough to enjoy the box of fireworks that Grandma and Grandpa bought at Costco. What a great weekend!




Thanks for coming Mom and Dad!