Happy 4th of July!

Who knew we could be as spontaneous as we were in our single days?


July 3rd as we sat and watched the ten o'clock news, my husband asked what we should do for the 4th. I muttered something about how I was not about to sit and endure six hours of country music that is only used to mask the hot, black pavement and 110 degrees with four kids just to watch a 20 minute fireworks show. Kirk then said something about, "Oh, but our kids need good memories of the 4th and fireworks!" Yeah. And I need a good tummy tuck. What's your point?

Then the weather segment came on and they started showing the weather for places up north and I asked, "What about Payson?"

We gave each other that, "Hmmmmm. Yeah." nod and decided that was what we would do.


The next morning, we put together a bunch of stuff to take with us. We dressed the kids in their co ordinating flag t-shirts blissfully unaware that every other person within a ten mile radius from a Walmart would buy the very same ones for this occasion as well. We packed coolers full of water bottles and snacks then slipped

on their flip flops and away we went.........

on a little over an hour drive................


to be greeted by rain. Lots and lots of rain.

That big, dark cloud I saw as we came up over the top of the mountain might have been my first clue that I probably should have paid more attention to that weather forecast I saw the night before.

And then I remembered some of my "spontaneous" trips I took as a young, single adult. New Year's eve Snow camping, Lake Powell in tents in July, driving to Park City just to see the B-52's in concert........ This had the potential of turning out badly.

The sleeping bags we had spread out to stake claim on our spot were drenched by 4:00. We hung out in the Tahoe and put on a DVD of Aladdin for the kids. Except about 45 minutes into the video, I noticed the automatic windows weren't rolling down so well. Probably should have kept the engine running while playing the DVD player. Luckily, the nice people in the car next to us gave us a jump with their own jumper cables seeing that we took ours out while packing the car for our spontaneous trip.
The rain kept coming down so around 6pm, we decided to just go for it. We managed to find a lone umbrella that Kirk just happened to have in his back pack. We also were fortunate that Lauren left her swimming towel in the car from her pool day last week. That came in handy as it made sitting on the waterlogged blanket feel only moderately saturated instead of thoroughly soused.

The kids had a blast playing with their light thing-a-ma-jigs.

The ducks also kept them busy.

Ian liked to go around and wave at all of the dogs. ( Seriously. Who brings dogs to see fireworks? )

Then Kirk entertained us by showing how fast my camera can take pictures.

Honestly. No dignity whatsoever.

Then Lauren wanted to see if I could take a picture of her jumping.

This was Ian as soon as the fireworks began. He spent most of the time with his hand over his mouth until he finally fell asleep from the stress of it all. You might not be able to tell, but we ended up sticking him inside a pillowcase since we did think to bring pillows. Extra blankets? Warm clothes? Common sense? No.

The pillowcases were the only dry things we had left.

I'm sure next year we'll be better prepared. Spontaneity is totally overrated.