America Rocks!

Happy Fourth of July!

[For your enjoyment, this blog is filled with fun games and trivia]

We hope everyone had a very happy and safe fourth of July. Andrea and I had a great time on the fourth. Provo, Utah puts on a great 4th of July celebration called the Freedom Festival ending in the spectacular Stadium of Fire in the evening. We thought the parade would be a good way to spend the fourth. So we went out the day before to get an idea of where to set up to watch the parade. (day before you ask?... keep reading)

While staking out some good spots for the parade the next morning we ran into the lessor known but highly entertaining part of the Freedom Festival, Colonial Days. Colonial Days is exactly what you would imagine it to be. People showing off the history of which we came from. There were story tellers, olde tyme tools, olde tymeish dressed people using olde tyme tools, historical documents, replica Mayflower, and of course kids performing. No holiday festival is complete without a few kids singing and dancing their way into our hearts and and filling them with holiday cheer. New to me this year was a number by Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch, called America Rocks! If you have the time look up the words or listen to the performance of this great patriotic number that will soon be a classic. It is totally cool!

The next morning was the Grand Parade. The Grand Parade is not just a get there a few minutes before and enjoy sort of parade. Up until this year, it has been a "better get your spot by 1:00 pm the day before" kind of parade, no joke. So we went to the street were they didn't allow over night sleeping and decided to get there about 6:30ish in the morning to get a decent spot in the shade for a parade that started 2 miles away at 9:00 am. Well were we wrong. Below is the way it looked at 6:30 am. We were able to find a decent spot among the tarps, chairs and blankets reserving spots. By 9:00 the place was packed: (Find Andrea in the picture below, click on picture to make bigger, caution to those with slow connections) Some of the next pictures are the highlights of the parade.

Nothing is more patriotic than Star Wars costumes. You have to admit they look pretty cool.
We had no idea who or what this was put it sure stared at us for a couple of minutes. Whoever can guess who this character is shall receive a reward.** (Hint he has his own PBS Kids show) Those eyes sure are creepy.

Curious George!

The parade staple: Llamas! (Billie, Andrea says you should sing the llama song now.)

Underdog!


Of course the parade had plenty of floats, politicians, and royalty, but we have all seen that before.

That night we watched the fireworks from Stadium of Fire from a park close to our apartment. My camera isn't too great so I didn't attempt pictures of it, but Stadium of Fire... with a name like that you can only imagine how good it was.


Happy Fourth of July Everyone!
**Figuring out who he is, is a reward in itself.