Hooray for Fireworks!

There wasn't a lot worth mentioning this last week until about Friday--we worked, Karl played in his second and final Ultimate Frisbee game of the season, we ate food and ran a lot...

But Friday started the exciting July 4th weekend. We kicked things off with a picnic with our friends Tina & Ruston, Paul & Susie, and Heather. We went up the canyon to South Fork and had hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chips, and watermelon. Then we played Frisbee, threw the Frisbee in the river, had a cartwheel contest, talked, made a big fire, made smores, and played Canasta (we slaughtered everyone else—probably beginner's luck). It was fun to hang out with friends again. It's actually been a while since we hung out with anyone besides family. Apparently, that's pretty typical for Newlyweds.

Saturday we went down to Kiwanis Park so Karl could play Ultimate and Angela could run around. She made it around the park without stopping (which takes about 9 minutes), but then she did it two more times. It was quite a feat. Then she joined in on the Frisbee game and had some impressive catches and even threw for the score. Karl hopes Angela decides she wants to play more often. After that, we came home and cleaned. Then we went to a party/picnic with some of our single friends—like Amber, Joralys, and Sharolyn—up the canyon at Bridal Veil Falls park. We celebrated Joralys' birthday with sandwiches, watermelon, and Amber's patented charmel cake. It's nice to know our single friends haven't totally outcast us.

We had to leave the party early so we could hike up the Y in time to see the fireworks. This was probably the coolest event of a very cool weekend. For some weird reason, Provo was doing its firework / Freedom Festival celebration on July 2nd instead of July 4th. Most people either pay $30 a seat to watch the fireworks inside a very crowded stadium, or arrive at a nearby park 12 hours early and throw down a blanket. We decided instead to hike up the Y and watch. Sure, the fireworks were a little smaller than they would have been if we had been in the stadium, but we could see a lot of things we couldn't have seen at the nearby parks, and we didn't have to compete with crowds. To top it off, we had an absolutely amazing sunset on our hike up. It was a perfect evening, and the only thing we'd do differently is bring up some chairs and hike up a little higher so there'd be nobody else around to annoy us with dull and loud conversations during the fireworks (there was a particularly obnoxious couple sitting next to us during the show, in case you're curious). Oh, and it took us an hour to drive home thanks to the 100,000 cars that must have been trying to get from Provo to Orem once the fireworks ended.

Sunday we had a nice relaxing day at home. On Monday we spent a lot of time with family. First, we dropped by Angela's parents, where Angela started a buttercream cake (Karl's favorite—it's something his grandmother makes, and it's very difficult to do well, so Angela had nightmares the night before about things turning out badly). Then we went to visit Karl's grandmother, Aunt Sharla, and dad (who's in town for the week). We had a gourmet vegetarian pizza from Papa Murphy's while we looked at a lot of pictures and played Golf (the card game). Then we came back for dinner at Angela's parent's, and the food was yummy. Then we played a game of Settlers. Angela was one turn from winning. Then we celebrated Karl's birthday (which is actually this Friday) with the buttercream cake and presents. The cake was great! Especially for Angela's first shot at it. Karl loved it. Finally, we went outside and set off a few fireworks.

We had a little bit of a scare as the night went on—Karl was chasing our two-year-old nephew Gavin around the house, and as they rounded a dark corner, Gavin fell head first into a window well that Karl didn't know about. Gavin's head hit the window and broke it, but miraculously Gavin only got a small bruise and scratch. We're all thankful that nothing worse happened, because it was quite a fall and the window was very broken.

But all in all, it was a great weekend. Hope y'all are doing well!

Posted July 05, 2005 (10:54 PM) | Comments (1)