Happy 4th of July

It was a beautiful day to celebrate America's birthday.  Shawn started the day by bagging a peak.  (He's still working on his 40 peaks in his 40th year, but he's waaaaay behind and may have to extend his deadline a bit.)  But still, he had a beautiful hike.  I wish I had decided to go with him after seeing the wildflowers in his pictures.

And beautiful views of the valley...

As soon as he got back, we hopped into the car and headed up Emigration Canyon to the Smolka's house for our annual 4th of July picnic.

We enjoyed eating, chatting and letting the kids run free.

We also had the obligatory Marsh cousins picture.  It was just our kids and Rob and Michelle's kids since everyone else lives out of town, but these 9 are good buddies and it's fun to have them together.

...and as always, it was extremely difficult to get a picture of everyone happy and smiling and looking at the camera... (typical Jonas here.)

We gave up on the kids photo after this and decided to inflict more pain by trying to get a picture of the whole Marsh gang.

(This took several tries also.)

Amelia had spent the morning painting all sorts of 4th of July stuff.

After the picnic, most of the kids went to Rob and Michelle's to play and we went home to clean and pack for Bear Lake.  As soon as the sun barely started on it's way down, the kids decided it was time to light the smoke bombs (since you can't see the colors in the dark anyway.)

They are all so easily entertained - including Shawn.  We all laugh every time we look at this picture.

We got the car mostly packed for our trip and then the Dunford's texted us to come watch fireworks with them, so we loaded everyone into the car and went.  It was a good spot because we could see at least 3 different fireworks shows going on all around us.

The kids managed to keep themselves busy while we waited.  (Lila was watching from the car.)

Most interactions between Jonas and Peter end in some sort of wrestling match whether at home or not.

As soon as the show was over, we headed home to put everyone to bed.  It was a fun, busy day - especially for the kids who spent almost the entire day with cousins and friends.