Independence Day

Our 4th of July celebration started on Saturday, July 3rd. There was a big parade in downtown St. Louis. We got up at the crack of dawn to go get good seats. It was the biggest parade I've ever seen! Here we are waiting for it to start. The good old arch in background.And here's the whole groupBen was holding an umbrella for Adalyn, my cousin's baby, and I couldn't pass up this photo. Notice the patriotic feel of it all :)Now for the fun stuff. Here are some of my favorites from the parade starting with the clown that walked on his hands...well, kind of.There were huge balloons too! These ones were fun since we saw Wicked the day before!Happy Birthday America!It was a great parade, but pretty long. We were just talking about leaving since we were 'paraded out' and then the end came. Thank goodness, because we were hot and starving! We ordered some yummy BBQ from Pappy's, a St. Louis original, and went home to devour it. After a good shower and a nap, we were ready for more! After the guys got back from a baseball game, we had a little firework show in the driveway at Megan's house. Even though the sun was down it was still VERY hot and humid outside.

Then, on Sunday afternoon we headed back over to Megan's for some home made Cafe Rio that was delicious! That is one thing I miss from Utah, I don't understand why they don't have them out here, but maybe they'll catch on some day. And here I am with Adalyn. I loved hanging out with her! She has such a cute personality and is always smiling.After eating, we packed up and went downtown for an air show by the arch. It was really neat to see so many cool tricks done by planes. This one had a man standing on the wings during the whole performance. Talk about a roller coaster ride! The plane was doing all sorts of barrel rolls and here it is upside down.It started pouring rain about halfway through the show so while I ran and tried to stay dry under a tree, Ben and some of his techs went out to play frisbee in it. Here they are after it stopped raining.We hung out for a while and waited for it to get dark since fireworks were at the same location as the air show. And of course got some pictures at the arch The fireworks were awesome! However, we weren't able to see all of them thanks to a rather large group of trees. Still a cool view and a fun day overall.

Happy 4th of July!