Happy 246th Birthday USA!

On Saturday I took the boys to Colonial Fest at Scera Park while Cat was at work at Liza was hanging out with friends.  Highlights of Colonial Fest included the playground, the children's games (including a game with Spiderman), the children's militia, and meeting Bernardo de Galvez (the Spanish governor of colonial Louisiana, who assisted the Americans during the Revolutionary War).  We stopped at a few tents and eventually some aunts and an uncle and some cousins arrived, so we had lunch with them and hung out for a little while before heading home.








Getting sized up for coffins.

Book binding!


If you lok closely you can see Natalie and some of her kids,
and Alysa and one of her kids.

That night when we were all together again we went to see
Minions: Rise of Gru, which we really liked.
Yes, teenagers showed up in formalware.
No, we don't understand why that became a thing.


On Monday we went back to Colonial Fest, this time with Ben and Liza.  We started out with some yummy baked goods, then Luke finally practiced his goat-milking skills.  Liza and I could have stayed and watched the potter for hours.  And Liza was probably the oldest kid attending school.






That afternoon we went to another movie - Jurassic World: Dominion, which was great.  Jack had been counting down the days for this movie to come out and he was SO excited to finally see it.  Then that evening we had cousins over for a cookout then we all went to Joseph's house for sprinklers, a warm-up home fireworks show, and finally a big city-sponsored fireworks show.











Who Turned Out the Lights?

Eliza jumped at the chance to go to a theater camp at UVU, putting on a play after just 7 3-hour rehearsals.  She had a blast at the camp!  And she was so excited to play the lead even though she was one of the youngest kids there, and her only acting experience was as Huck Finn in her 5th grade class's production of Tom Sawyer.  She took it very seriously and spent a lot of time memorizing lines.

Who Turned Out the Lights? was an original one-act play written by the camp staff.  It was a simple whodunit, with Eliza playing the part of the detective's assistant/fiance who is tired of doing all the work to solve crimes and never getting any credit.  She did a wonderful job (it helped that the part definitely suited her) and it was so great to see her in action!

Curtain call during at the first performance.

I'd brought 3 of Eliza's friends to come cheer her on!


I took a lot more pictures during my second viewing:








Boys' Day at the Air Show

Ben took the boys up to Hill Air Force Base for the air show!  Their big adventure got off to a rocky start when huge crowds caused long delays getting into the show.  (The biennial show was cancelled in 2020, so it was projected that half a million people would attend over two days, but I don't know how accurate that turned out to be.)  It took the guys about two hours just to get in!  I was impressed that they didn't give up and just go home.  Ben said that once they got in, the wait was completely worth it and everyone loved seeing the planes in the air and the ones on the ground!

Waiting to get into the air show.

(F-35)



Walking up to the C-5 Super Galaxy

About to go into the C-5...

...which is big enough to carry 2 battle tanks or 6 Apache helicopters.

Ben was only slightly nervous to see Luke and Jack sit in this helicopter
and flip all the switches, since it had just flown in from California the day before.
It was not a demonstration helicopter.




Blowing the horn.



Notice the people sitting in the shade of the wings of the B-52.

The A-10 Warthog.