Happy Birthday, America!

I hope everyone had a fun-filled 4th of July! We started off our morning with homemade banana bread (mmmm!) for breakfast. We spent most of the morning doing household chores, and while I sorted and folded laundry, I watched HBO's "John Adams," the episode called "Independence." It makes my heart swell with pride and gratitude to think of the early Americans who were brave enough to do what needed to be done to establish our country.

In the early afternoon, we celebrated by making these patriotic red, white and blue star cookies. Caleb is my smiling model:

My husband's family has the happy tradition of doing a late afternoon BBQ/water party followed by tank races and backyard fireworks:

Each cousin (and anyone else who wants to exercise their creative juices) gets to decorate a tank in whatever way they can imagine. We came prepared this year with printed images for the kids to cut out. Here is Samuel's "Super Samuel" tank:


Samuel watches his tank in the race:


Caleb's "How to Train Your Dragon" tank:


Caleb watches his tank:


We invited our brother-in-law, Nathan, to join us this year as my sister (his wife) is in Germany playing in the German Opera for the summer. Here is his fancy tank:


Nathan watches his tank:


Andrew's tank sported an "army" of his favorite characters from Pokemon, Star Wars, Angry Birds, and his favorite Marvel Heroes. An army tank driver is on top, driving the whole gang:


Here Andrew watches his tank:


Hyrum wanted a Beyblades tank with Ginga Hagane riding on top:


Hyrum watches his tank:


After the tank race, we lit our other fireworks. Jon is lining up a bunch of parachute fireworks here:


The kids got to have all sorts of treats while we watched and played. Here's Andrew:


And Samuel:


And Caleb:


Enoch, sweet baby, slept through most of the fireworks show inside the house:


Hyrum caught a red parachute:

Jon holding our little ones:

Here's what the table looked like before we lit off any fireworks.


Enoch did wake up to join us for the last few fireworks:


This year was so fun with aerial fireworks being allowed in Utah now. My favorite was one that Nathan brought called "Powder House" made by TNT. I'll remember to buy that one next year. It was a fun, sweet, and happy day. Happy birthday, America!