24th of July

My dad planned our 24th of July activities this year and he did a FABULOUS job! It was so fun to get out and do something different. Here are the day's festivities...

All the family (minus Jonny, sadly, because he had other things he needed to do) started out meeting at Thanksgiving Point's cafe where my dad bought us all a delicious lunch and ice cream for the kiddos.

Mike and I outside Thanksgiving Point

These two are besties!

Goofballs!

All the kids at the ice cream bar

After we ate, we walked around the gardens. They are incredible if you've never been. My parents have season passes so we've been before but every time we go it's always amazing to see the perfectly manicured flowers, bushes, trees and paths. We stopped at one point on some benches and my dad gave a brief talk on the sacrifice of the pioneers telling us how many thousands of miles they walked. It was so neat because as we hiked later in the day, Christian my 8 year old nephew was sweating and chanting quietly to himself, "If the pioneers can walk thousands of miles, I can climb this mountain..." over and over. It warmed my heart and gave me the encouragement to keep going too! This visit to the gardens was even better though because they recently put a huge collection of Angela Johnson's bronze statues of Christ on display. She is from Alpine and has never had any professional training which is absolutely remarkable. The statues are breath-taking. She has smaller depictions of Christ and events in his life and right now there is one massive statues of Christ walking on water. Apparently all the smaller statues will be recreated to life size like the one of Him walking on water. They will all be permanently placed inside Thanksgiving Point gardens. I cannot wait to go back and see them all in life size. They were absolutely incredible and it was a spiritual experience to walk around looking at them.

Marisa, Dustin & Lexi

View over the gardens

Can't go to the gardens without feeding the fish!

These fish are fascinatingly freaky!

I think one of my new fears might be falling into this fish pool. I have no doubt these giant feeding-frenzied fish would just start going at me. Piece by piece...with their giant sucking mouths... Anyway...

They had a ton of lilly pads on the lake. They were beautiful.

Look at that face-- London is just too cute.

My favorite statue-- Christ walking on water. Also my favorite story in the scriptures!

Lincoln checking out the statues. It was so cute to see all the kids staring at the statues of Christ and asking what the story was about.

From there we drove to the bottom of the Timpanogos cave where my dad had made reservations for us to hike up and tour the caves! I was so excited. I've never hiked Timp and I've never been in a cave anywhere. The hike was long and hot (high 90's)-- the kids were super troopers to go the whole way. I loved the hike. Yes, it was steep and uphill the whole way but there's something satisfying about getting the top. At the top we entered through a little door and were able to have a tour guide show us all the areas of the cave with different stalactites and stalagmites, stories about how the cave was discovered and the different formations that looked like animals. Inside it's cold, damp and I never realized how many different colors were in a cave's formations-- green, orange, purple, yellow. It really was very neat and I totally recommend it!

Hiking!

And they walked, and walked, and walked, and walked....

Almost to the top!

We made it!! Sweaty and all--we are proud! :)

After the hike we went back to my parents and starving... ravaged a whole lot of delicious food while sitting on the back porch chatting. Classic summertime evening. Afterwards we went out to the street and did our annual box fireworks. They are so lame and yet I am so fascinated with them. I love trying to get them lit before your eyebrows get singed off by the next one that's already started, I love racing away to turn around and watch the sparks, I love the ones that make your ears ring because they "crackle and pop" so loud, I LOVE the purple and gold shower ones (my favorite), I love setting up the finale and then singing "I'm Proud to be an American" (even though it was Pioneer day).... I love summertime and I love July!

And most of all, I sure love my family! It was so enjoyable spending a whole day with them-- all thanks to my dad! Happy 24th!