America's Freedom Festival

(originally published December 3rd, 2015)

Provo and the surrounding area hosts "America's Freedom Festival" each year.  The festival plans events throughout the year, but the most popular events take place during the week or so leading up to the Fourth of July.

Two of the things I love about the Freedom Festival are the Balloon Festival and Colonial Fest.  Because we started our trip home on July 3rd, we decided to squeeze in both events on July 2nd.  Why not?

The Bigs and I got up early so that we could attend the Balloon Festival in Provo, while Luke slept at home and Ben got ready for work.  It's just so cool to be in the middle of all of those big hot air balloons!  What a sight.

See the piggy bank balloon near the top?  Well, this may be a picture of the incident
that caused the piggy bank balloon to crash 5 or so minutes later.  Apparently the basket of
the Wyoming Cowboy balloon tore a hole in the pig balloon.  When I was visiting my
Dad in Georgia a couple days later, he had actually seen this on the news, haha.  Read the AP story HERE.
The pictures in the story show where the balloon crashed, which was very close to where we parked.

Kids showing off their Smokey the Bear discs, with Yoda and Darth looking on.

After spending some time at the Balloon Festival, we picked up some doughnuts and went home to get Luke.  We saw Ben off to work, and soon after we left again to go to the Colonial Fest at the Scera Park in Orem.  Oh, how I love this event.  I was so glad when I found out that we'd be able to go before our trip!

Luke decided to join the minutemen.
It was challenging for him to carry that gun during the
march to the battleground, but so cute.

Eliza was more interested in fashion than politics.

School.

We met up with cousins and they had fun trying out some of the children's chores of the time.

They also played some Colonial games.

Getting ready for the Redcoats to fire their cannon.

It was a full, fun day for sure, and we loved it!