it's independence day.

Our Independence Day brought started out with sleeping in (even though we'd planned to run to the balloon festival... obviously that didn't happen!) and getting out of bed later in the morning.  After a quick breakfast for the three of us, we headed to the Freedom Festival for our annual sunglasses run.  We ended up not finding any sunglasses that caught our fancy this year, but we did find the Tornado Fries that T LOVES.  So of course we bought some and ate them to our stomachs content!

Then we headed home, fed Rylee, and headed up to Aspen Hills to visit the family at their cabins.  We caught most of them at their naptime, so we handed Rylee off to Grandma and Grandpa to finish her nap, and played a game of Scrabble and Skip-Bo with Myst.

I spy with my little eye a sleeping grandpa and baby in the background...

Bonding time with Grandma (who happens to actually be sitting down for once!).

Lady took over Rylee's new blanket from Katie.  It's becoming one of our favorite blankets too- a muslin blanket that's not white?!  We love it.

And then it was a quick transfer over to grandpa...

After games and naps, we ate our 4th of July dinner of bacon hot dogs (compliments of Misty!), chips, salads, sides, brownie cupcakes, and delicious cherries.  Yum!

Then we headed out to take a couple of pictures before the sun went down...

[bonding with Aunt Misty]

We convinced everyone to take a group picture (amazing how once you mention that the baby needs a picture with everyone, they're in a little bit of a better mood to take a picture with everyone!).  Hello explosion of red, white, and blue.

We headed home right after we saw some of Moroni's fireworks and Mt. Pleasant's fireworks.  We hit some clogged up traffic on the way home and were stopped for a good half hour due to a terrible accident that killed three people and left three others that had to be life-flighted out.  Such a sad story for Independence Day.  We said a prayer for those involved in the accident and slowly headed toward Provo once more.

We finally got home after midnight and hit the sack!

All in all, it was a fantastic, lazy, low-key 4th of July spent with each other and family.  It was exactly what we needed and wanted!

 Happy first 4th of July, Rylee girl!

...AND this weekend meant we got to get together with JaeKaeNae for a visit while Kate and Dave were down from Idaho for a visit!  Kate got to meet Rylee and Kole for the first time and brought us freezer meals, toys, and homemade blankets for our kiddos!  It was exceptionally wonderful to be together with besties and see Kate in her 2nd pregnancy glory.  Can't wait to meet her 2nd Baby Girl in September!