Ballon festival, Randall family BBQ, and F for fireworks with friends

This picture is the very example of why I love the 4th of July so much. It is a magical holiday! I love the warm weather, the yummy food, the fun traditions, and how fun it is for the kids!

This was our first full "Kneaders Free" holiday. I took advantage of every single minute of it! Ever since we opened Kneaders I have lost Kyle for every single holiday. If he wasn't working at the store he was exhausted from the long holiday hours. So I was beyond excited to have him all to us for the whole weekend!
We started out the weekend with going to Provo to see the hot air balloon festival. It is so early and every year when my alarm goes off and I have to wake the kids I wonder if it is worth it. But my kids love it! I realize the days are not to far off that it will not be cool to be with their parents, or they will grumble every time we take them to a family activity. So I hang onto the precious moments of when they want to go do stuff.

We got there early enough to see all of the balloons inflate, this is one my favorite parts. I love to see all the huge balloons all together. The kids love it to, although they tend to get a little scared when the fire up the huge burners.
Carson was excited that the Darth Vader balloon was going to be there. We are not huge Star Wars people but he has friends who are into it and recently got the Star Wars lego Wii game for his birthday. I showed him the storm troopers too, he did not want to go get a picture with them until the end. (It took him a little while to wake up and not be Mr. Grumpy.)


After the balloons took off we had breakfast with the fam and sat on the blanket and ate and just talked. A few of the balloons made it back to the field for the balloon games.

After the balloons we went up to my sister Michelle's house. They recently just finished their yard and were excited to have a chance to put it to good use! The kids played in the pool, with the slip in slide and on the swing. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun to just visit.The food was super yummy too! We had BBQ chicken and steak, a combined effort of the grill master Kyle and Dave my brother in law.We headed home for some very much needed naps. The kids (and adults) were very tired.

This was my attempt at getting a picture of the 3 of my kids in their red white and blue. As you can tell, not very successful but still adorable!We decided to have a big friend/family 4th of July BBQ this year. We always do our firework show and dessert but we decided to have a BBQ as well. For some reason I can't do just a small get together so I turned it into a bigger project than it needed to be. But it was so fun, looked beautiful, and everything tasted delicious! We had a really big turn out this year and we were so glad we were able to have so many people come.After dinner, visiting, lots of trampoline time, park time, and some football throwing of the men we did fireworks. We had a lot of tired kids so we had to kind of start before dark. As usual Kyle puts on an amazing show. He went up to Evanston to get the fireworks again this year and he got some amazing ones! I think the kids favorite was the Captin America one that shot of 15 parachutes, all had American Flags in them.
To say Carson loves fireworks is an understatement. He starts asking after Christmas when we get to do fireworks. He would ask Kyle daily when he was going to get the fireworks. Kyle got back late from getting the fireworks so Carson didn't get to see him when he got home. He came into our room at 3 in the morning that night crying becasue he wanted to go see what fireworks he had bought.
Everyone loved the fireworks and had so much fun. It was such a fun night and so great to be surrounded by so many people we love!