God Bless the USA!

I have had a great love for my country ever since I was a child in elementary school. Marrying Kent on July 3 has done that much more to make the beginning of July quite meaningful to me. So here's the blog of this past week. (Did you know you can click on the link of blogged pictures to see them almost full-screen? This really is like sharing my scrapbook with all of you. Maybe the experiment will be a success!)



We started this patriotic week with a great block of Church meetings followed by the patriotic service last Sunday. The music really added to the spirit there; it is always touching to see the past and present servicemen stand when the anthem is played for their branch of the military.

On the morning of Independence Day, we went to Macey's French toast breakfast. (Why have I typed the word "French" twice in my post about the USA USA USA USA USA. There!) The line was long, so we had to eat in the car to make it to our parade bleachers.

After the parade, we met with the White side of the family for a picnic. The rest of the afternoon was filled with DVDs and swimming for the girls, and napping for Green and us parents.

In the evening, we went to our first Stadium of Fire. We really enjoyed the parachuting soldiers, the dancers, Glenn Beck, the Blue Man Group (they were really good), and the fireworks. Miley Cyrus was the big feature, and we didn't enjoy her as much. We spent half of her performance watching her flip her hair around and turn her back to the audience. For her encore, she sang a few songs that the girls knew...and the middle-aged (older than me) woman behind us was singing along too! Scary! So the girls danced to her music a little, except for Purple, who didn't get a nap earlier and she fell asleep. A fun event overall. Thanks Jake and Jenni for taking care of Green.

We wrapped up the weekend by cleaning the garage. (Not exciting enough to take a photo, but Kent is excited to park his car in there again.) And we celebrated our anniversary by going on a date: dinner and a walk around BYU's campus. Again, not super exciting, but it was fun to discover BYU's terraced garden. And it was my first time in the "new" (finished after I graduated 10 1/2 years ago) library. Thanks to Mindy and David for babysitting.

Happy Birthday to the USA and to our family!