July 4th, 2009

Well, I love July 4th. It has always been my favorite holiday. When I was young we would always do something fun for the 4th even if it was staying home and have a BBQ but one of my favorite things to do was go to North Fork up in Ogden canyon. Well, I haven't done that for about twenty years and so this year we packed the kids in the van and we drove up there. We found a really nice place and we had a BBQ. Then we relaxed and just enjoying nature. There is a river that runs along the picnic area's that isn't to swift so the kids enjoyed playing in there and just exploring. Timo and I just relaxed. Its so beautiful up there. It is very green. and you can hear the river and air was so fresh. After a while a couple of squirrels came to join our family picnic. They were so cute and fat. I think they just live off chips and burnt marshmallows. They were funny. They would just scramble around and look for food. We set some chips out for them and even a couple of cookies. At one point one came right up to Emili. You should have seen her eyes. She couldn't believe they would come so close to her. It was funny. Then we hiked up to the water fall. The kids enjoyed the hike. Its fun now that they are a little older because they all could make it with ease and no one was complaining. We finally made it to the water fall and the kids had a blast. They were splashing around and climbing up the rocks. It was a lot of fun for everyone. Then we went back to our picnic spot and those two squirrels got into everything. They ripped open our bag of chips and our carrots (they didn't like the carrots so much). They had food everywhere!! We just laughed and laughed. After we were done with that we played a few games of master moose and then we went home. Later that night we went to the Kaysville city fireworks. They were amazing this year. They went for thirty minutes of non stop fireworks. It was great.

During the day all I could think about is how blessed we are to live in such an amazing country. We are blessed to be free to enjoy such wonderful blessings. We enjoy fireworks and not bombs going off like in Iran and all those middle eastern countries. I was also thinking how blessed we are to live in an amazing state like Utah. Here we were up in the mountains enjoying the beauty of the green trees, the river, the water fall and how beautiful the rocks form on the mountain. It was truly amazing but its cool because if I wanted to drive a few hours south I could enjoy an entirely different scenery with just as amazing sights and its all right here in Utah. We are truly blessed to live in such a wonderful place.