Jeff was gone for the 24th of July

So, Jeff went along on the 50 mile hike with the 14-15 year old scouts in our church congregation this last week, and we were on our own as a family. I got a few projects done in the late night hours when I was lonely, and overall it wasn't too bad. We did have to celebrate the 24th without him though.

 Mapleton does a big celebration for the 24th. We got up pretty early so the girls could run in the community 5k. I didn't run because I was scheduled to help with the children's parade. I got an official orange vest and everything.

 I'm in the Stake Primary, and we are over ten local congregations of primary children --children 3-12 years old. So I got to help all of these kids get on their floats without getting run over. With all of these floats created by volunteers, I was surprised at how cute they turned out!

This float was "banana island" and each kid had a hand painted minion shirt to wear on it. 

I got to this float a minute too late --they had the entire cast of the movie "UP" dressed up to ride on it. 

Later, Mapleton does a huge firework show in the park. (You'll hear us commenting in the video on the phone's recording quality --sorry about that!)

We never go because Jeff hates the crowds, and I hate the traffic trying to get in and out, but this year I decided to just go for it. We had to park over a mile away on the side of the highway, but it was so worth it! I met my friend Brenda and her husband, who saved us a little patch of grass to spread our blanket on. 

 We leaned back and just enjoyed it. It started with the Mormon anthem "Come Come ye Saints" that brought chills up and down my spine, then the next song was Ozzy Ozbourne's Crazy train which made me laugh. It was a great show. 

 It ended up being a pretty late night for all of us, since the show ended near 11:00, and then we had a very long hike back to the car, followed by stop and go traffic almost all of the way home. 

We needed to get up pretty early the next morning to watch some my friend's kids while she and her husband packed to move. We punted for a while at home, then took the kids up to BYU to explore. 

 So much to see up there. It made me homesick in a way. I have a lot of great memories on that campus, all tinged with the dread of upcoming tests or overdue papers it's true, but great just the same. 

We went to the new biology building looking for aquariums that didn't exist and trying to break into the atrium (I was hoping my old employee card would work on the card swipe door lock but no luck), and  then the Eyring science building filled with science displays and pretty rocks. We had to leave that building pretty quickly because Kai started to open a door to the roof and set off an alarm. We ended up at the bookstore with ice cream bars to help us feel better. That worked. 

We finished with the art museum, and the Life science museum where I got a phone call from Jeff --he was home! 

 We had a fun few days, but it was awfully nice to see him again!

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