Small Town 4th of July

In attempt to save money Paul and I decided that this year we would spend our 4th of July right here in Cedar City. We didn't really have any huge plans, but we banded together with some of our other married friends that were staying here and had ourselves a party!

Wednesday morning (July 4th) Cedar City put on a cute little parade. Paul and I went along with our friends Shay and Ray Martel and Ada and Dion Munk who also brought their cute kids Madi and Dory. I am used to big town parades with real floats and lots of cool stuff, but this year the parade was way smaller than I thought it would be, but it was really fun to come and support the small town community. There weren't any big snazzy floats but there were dance companies and baseball teams and lots of familiar faces. I think I could get used to small town festivities. They just feel so friendly.

 Paul had fun with Madi and Dory. He took them into the street with the "big kids" to get candy and sprayed with water. They thought it was so cool to get candy thrown at them. Some of the bigger kids were actually thoughtful enough to share some of their candy with the little kiddos.

One of the nurseries here in town passed out plants in the parade. We jumped on that opportunity and snatched a yellow crookneck squash to add to our garden. Paul and I just had a crookneck die at our garden so this one should be perfect to replace our dead one. 

After the parade was over, we debated on what we were going to do. We had planned a hike, but with time constraints we couldn't manage a hike. We decided to go to what we call the baby lake. Some how  Shay and Ray convinced Ada and Dion to come swimming with us so we had a great ole time. For once the wind wasn't blowing us away. The weather was somewhat nice, and the water temperature was actually quite pleasant.

Paul jumped right into his old habits of swimming lessons and worked with Madi on coming deeper into the lake. Ray and I tried to start a water fight with Paul which turned into Paul and Ray wrestling with each other. At that point I just let them have at it. I joined the girls on the beach to dry off.

After the lake, we planned to have a small BBQ with as many neighbors as we could get. Paul was excited to show off his grilling skills again. When dinner time came around we had a pretty good amount of people show up. We were expecting to have maybe 4 couples come, but we had at least 15 people and eat some grub with us.

After dinner we played some Jungle Speed and waited around for the firework show. Because Utah has had so many fires, and Cedar had a fire scare a week ago, there were restrictions on our fireworks. They had to be in a parking lot during certain hours and only on certain days. Since we knew everyone would be doing fireworks at the park or school parking lot we decided to save money ourselves and watch everyone else's' fireworks. We set up camp at one of the high schools with hopes that it would be a good spot to watch the big show that the town would put on. The firework show was better than I expected. When the town show was going on, other people were shooting of arial fireworks to try and compete with the "big guns." Despite not having and immediate family to share our 4th of July with, it was better than I expected it would. Paul and I have been blessed with such amazing friends that have really added to our experience here in Cedar City.