Our Fourth of July

In my opinion, this has been the best 4th of July EVER! I think it was as American as you can get.

The night before, the Cousins had a s'mores roast in Whitney and Stetson's new backyard of their very own new house. We had the proud homeowners, me and Josh, Darcy and Tim, and Tim's sister Stephanie. It was a really fun night.

Saturday morning Josh and I went over to the fields behind Provo High School to watch the hot air balloons. We were too late to see them take off and too early to watch them land but it was neat to see them float all over the city. Later we met Whitney on University Avenue and 3rd North for the grand Provo Freedom Days Parade. We swung by the fabulous Provo Bakery and picked up the best glazed doughnuts I've ever had. Between the three of us (no one else would get out of bed for the parade) we indulged in quite a bit of sugar--which made up for the fact that no one would throw candy at us. The parade was as spectacular as ever--marching bands, pipe bands, good lookin' floats, college rivalry, and giant floating characters.

After the parade we met up with all the sleepyheads at the Robinson's place for a barbecue. We were lucky to have Tim there with his outstanding grill to fix up some fancy hamburgers, hotdogs, and Jamaican jerk chicken wings. This time we had a full count with Darcy and Tim, Jarom and Ashley, Whitney and Stetson, and the entertaining Lindsey Jordan. We all laughed, danced, listened to music, and told stories in the waning strip of shade in the backyard. Someone had the great idea of going to the pool at Lindsey's apartment complex so we cleaned up and took off.

Darcy and Tim couldn't join us at the Raintree complex but we had a blast. The seven of us had pool jumping contests . I, personally, thought that the High School Musical jump that Ashley and I did was the best. But Josh's bellyflop comes in a close second.
Once our toes were wrinkly, our faces were freckly, and our shoulders were sunburned we joined Darcy at Jarom's house to watch the greatest summer movie of all time: THE SANDLOT. It was especially fun to watch since it was filmed in Utah. I think it's the second most quoted movie in the Cousin crew, just behind That Thing You Do.

After the movie we split. Some people went to fight for a space outside the BYU stadium where SheDaisy and the Jonas Brothers were putting on a concert. Darcy, Josh, and I climbed up on the roof of the neighboring Apollo apartment complex to play games and watch the fireworks. We joined our friends from the ward, Cliff and Nicole Bergmann and Jill and Grant Ensign. The fireworks were only a couple of miles away and, from our view, they were right at eye level. It was beautiful! It would have been beautiful and relaxing had there not been rather luminous clouds and lightning rolling towards us. But it was a very colorful and exciting show.

And that was how we ended our perfect Fourth of July.