24th of July in Utah

For the 24th of July, we were able to be in Utah and have a quick, spur of the moment celebration with my family.  Of course, my mom was out of town with Emily (who had just had a baby) but we had fun without her...but not as much fun as we would have had WITH her...right mom??

Aspen and Steve and my dad threw together a fun evening with games, and yummy food!

We started out by blowing up a whole bunch of balloons....and then we made the mistake of handing the balloons to the 3 year olds to hold. They got the strings MAJORLY tangled up.  It almost required cutting them and retying them all.  But we worked our de-tangling magic and fixed it.

After that, we played balloon tag, or stomp on the balloon, or whatever you might want to call it.  You basically tie a balloon to each of your ankles, and then run around trying to pop other people's balloons while keeping yours from being popped.  It was GREAT fun.  The kids could hardly even handle their joy that all the adults were playing too!

We played a couple more fun games, including capture the flag - where my dad and I almost killed ourselves trying to act like we were kids again.  He tried to run past me to get our flag, and I sprinted after him and happened to pinch his side while trying to snag him...while hilarious, it was painful.  Needless to say, he was OK being in jail for a little while to rest up.  We ultimately won by deceiving the other team to come over for ice cream sandwiches while someone else on our team ran behind them and got the flag. It was epic!  The kids keep talking about how much fun it was and how they want to play again.

And some pictures of the kids in front of the ladders that were set up for another game.
We loved spending time with the cousins!

 Brody wasn't as excited about it all though.

We did a few fireworks after all the games, and then called it a night! 

It was the perfect way to celebrate the day!