Happy Independence Day!

Our 4th of July weekend started early Friday morning laying sod at the grandparents Fredricksons' house. That project turned out pretty well considering that only one of our group had ever laid sod before. We finished their backyard in about an hour and a half, which is pretty good considering we thought it would take about 4. I have to say that sod is amazing. At 7 AM there was no grass on the ground, but by 9:30 my grandparents had a beautiful green lawn that looked like it had taken months to grow. It's nice to see the product of your work so quickly.

Friday night, Rich and I went out to eat with some friends of mine from high school that I haven't seen forever. Brianne Eyre and her husband Tim were up in Ogden from St. George, and we met up with Trevor Barker and his wife Blaire for dinner. It was great to see those guys again.

Friday night, Tyson and Krystle came over for the Fredrickson family fireworks show, where we all got eaten alive by mosquitoes. You should see the bites I have on my legs, my toe, my finger, pretty much anywhere they could get me.

Tyson and I have this tradition of doing a tank war with those little firework tanks. We buy a bunch of them, put armor on them (aluminum foil), put extra guns on some (taken from other tanks), and line 'em up to fight each other. We only fought with four tanks this year, and we tied. There seemed to be equal damage to our tanks.

Preparing the tanks (with cute pregnant Krystle!)

These were my tanks. I named them after Mariners' players for Rich (he thought Tyson and I were nuts).

Getting ready for war

The aftermath

We ended with a wonderful display of fireworks from Costco. Nothing too huge because they were all legal. Tyson and Rich were the official fireworks starters because they love fire. I thought it was funny when my dad realized he was missing out on the fun and went to join them at the end. We also had sparklers, on my request, because I feel it is not really the 4th of July without them.

Saturday, the 4th, started with a breakfast with my parents' ward. I felt a little goofy there because Rich and I don't really know anyone. This isn't the ward I grew up in, so I couldn't talk with old leaders or anything like that. But there was good food and fun times. I got to ride in their childrens' parade on the back of my dad's motorcycle. This consisted of a bunch of primary kids riding their bikes around. Think that's awesome? We just rode around the church parking lot. Now that's awesome. I got to throw candy to all of the adults because the children were in the parade.

Later on Saturday, Rich learned to drive a motorcycle. I was a little scared at first, especially when they were just going for a ride around the block that took like 20 minutes. My mom suggested that we call to see if they were okay. Finally, they got back, and we eventually took a drive out to Little Mountain, pretty uneventful because you have to stop at a random point in the road where it becomes US Air Force property.

Saturday night, we didn't really get to see a big fireworks show. We were just going to see what we could see from my parents' backyard, but everywhere there was a good show there was a bunch of trees or a building or a hill in the way. Oh well. There's still the 24th of July to look forward to.

Okay, that was a long post. Sorry. I'll try to keep them shorter. But anyway, hope you had a happy 4th of July weekend!