Our awesome July 4th weekend

We've been looking forward to my brother coming up to visit us for a while. Literally, that is because we first started trying to schedule this in March. But finally we were able to find a time when we were all available, and it worked out well for them to have the long weekend. He drove up from Vegas with his wife, 7 year old daughter and one of their two dogs on Thursday afternoon.

First we went to the parade on Friday morning. We drove around looking for a place to back the truck in and sit in the bed to see over the other people for a long time. Turns out the cops didn't want us to do that. But then we finally found this spot in a covered parking area that no one had noticed yet. Jackpot! Not only could we see while sitting down, but it was shaded to boot.

Our view of the parade:

And the parade's view of us:

We wandered around the downtown booths for a while, but that was too crowded, so we just went to lunch and headed home to let my kids take a nap. Tyler is very much in a "copying everything I see anyone else doing" stage right now, so he enjoyed following Maya around. When she sat on a ball, he hunted until he found one to sit on.

When she sat on the porch to read, he sat next to her to listen to the story.

And they even enjoyed throwing snaps into the street, even if it seemed like only half of them popped. Less, in Tyler's case, since he threw them up instead of down.

Meanwhile, Kaitlyn was enjoying being held by so many new people. She does love having fans! Maya was especially a big help.

That night we did some fireworks in the street and broke out the glow bracelets while we waited for the city fireworks. Tyler adored his glow bracelet, and even slept holding two of them that night. The glorious part was that the fireworks show was just down the hill from us, so we had a great view from our back porch. They weren't very close up, but we didn't have to fight any crowds, so I thought it was a good trade.

The next morning we hiked up to Timp Cave. Gary and his family had never been up there before, and we hadn't gone together since I was pregnant with Tyler. It is a true hike up there, and we spent a bit of it passing around the most heavy backpacks and the kids. Jackie showed us all up though, even though she went running that morning! Tyler and Kaitlyn were carried up, and Maya was a real trooper, going a bit faster than me sometimes.

The best part of hiking up is that you get an interesting, long tour through a 45 degree cave at the end of it. If only all hikes let you cool down like that. Our tour guide used the word "adventure" seemingly 3 times in every sentence, which should be the joke for a while. But the cave is so neat is speaks for itself anyway.

Hiking down is so much easier than hiking up. Both kids conked out in thier carriers, in fact.

Once we got home, we got busy preparing for that night. We had a BBQ with my extended family from SLC so that they could visit with Gary and family. We had burger and dogs, but since Gary and his family are vegetarian we also tried my friend's Mushroom burger recipie, which was fabulous. I was worried that after carrying out all of the food it would be to hot out there, but we could not have asked for better weather! We all had a wonderful evening in our backyard.

And Tyler was absolutly LOVING their dog. It was fun to watch them play!

Kaitlyn is a few months younger than my cousin's daughter, but they really seemed to like inspecting each other.

This was the debut of my lunch trays. Christopher thought this was my silliest purchase ever, but I thought they were really fun when I got them from a surplus school sale. They are more stiff and bigger than a paper plate to have in your lap, the compartments keep the food apart, and they are "green" since I don't waste paper plates. Plus fun!