4th of July 2013

     Just like last year, this year Paul and I did not travel home for the 4th of July. We spent it right here in Cedar City with our friends and neighbors. We recently met a newly married couple in our apartment complex and have become really good friends with them. Matt and Amber Hobbs have really clicked with Paul and I. We spent the 4th with them as well as a super cute family in our ward, the Olenslagers.
    To start out our day we went to the parade. I have said this before, but small town parades are not anything spectacular if you grew up in a big city, but they sure are cute. There aren't any really awesome floats or anything, but it is still worth it to go watch the parade. After the parade we went with Amber and Matt to lunch.
     The plan after lunch was to meet up with the Olenslagers and go ice blocking. I was quite excited about this because I have never been ice blocking before. When we got to the hill, the Olenslager girls showed us how it was done. We had SO much fun messing around and figuring out how to ice block. Once we had kind of, sort of, not really figured out the concept, we decided to try going down the hill in a train. This was my favorite part for sure! You went faster, and you had someone else to help you keep yourself where you needed to be. Matt had a few great crashes and got some sweet grass burns. Some how Paul and I both lucked out and didn't get any scrapes or bumps or bruises that we noticed.
     Once we finished ice blocking, we split ways so everyone could shower and clean up. We were having everyone over for dinner in a few hours. Paul and I managed to fall asleep and take a 2 hour nap. We woke up just in time to race to the store and get some things before everyone came over.
     We had a BBQ, (even though it rained on us). We played some games, and had a fabulous time. When it got dark we drove over to the high school to watch the big fireworks, and everyone else's fire works. Cedar City has fire restrictions and you could only do fireworks in a large parking lot, so naturally we went with the money saver route and watched everyone else do fireworks. We did buy some pop its and sparklers and the younger girls had a hoot with those.
     At 10:00 the Cedar City firework show started. The best part of the whole show was when one of the larger fireworks kind of exploded on the ground and destroyed half of the finale. There was a massive huge mushroom cloud that was pretty awesome. The finale lasted like 30 seconds, but the explosion beforehand was pretty legit.
     I am grateful to have such wonderful friends around to celebrate the holidays with. While this was no Salt Lake City celebration, it was pretty great.