Happy 4th!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! Since Audrey is still in CA and Matt joined Taylor at Scout Camp the night before, it was a quiet day-just me and the two little boys. We started the day with the traditional 4th of July breakfast at church. It is always a great way to start the day-good food and patriotic music. We have a lot of talent in our ward. I'm always glad that there are other people around who are willing to sing. Personally, I'd rather run naked through the streets than sing in public but that's another post for another day. My favorite performance was Bro. Seaman's 'God Bless the USA.' He sings it acapella wearing his military uniform. It's very moving, even for a tough chick like me.

I spent the rest of the day conquering Mt. Laundry in preparation for our next trip. We leave Sat. for CA again. My mom and I will fly out from there and head back east for a Church History/American Heritage tour while Matt stays behind and entertains the kids. Once we meet back up, we have some fun things planned to do as a family down there-probably a trip to Knott's and maybe a visit to LaBrea Tarpits for the resident dinosaur fan, Noah. Two days ago, my Leno tickets arrived in the mail! I have a sick obsession with attending TV show tapings and I've just about seen every one that I'm interested in. There's a slight chance that I'll get to see Letterman next week in NYC which really only leaves the holy grail.....Oprah. If that happens, I'll have to find another reason to live.

Anyway, back to the 4th. In between laundry loads, I played simple games with the boys. Noah and I took turns drawing a squiggle that the other person had to make into a picture for hours. It doesn't take much to entertain that boy. Later in the day he said, "Mom, today was awesome. You didn't even clean anything!" Hmm. I guess I should spend more time with him during the day and get more cleaning done at night while he is asleep.

Our favorite event of the day was making a Jello Flag. Grandma Judy gave us the mold last weekend and the boys have been begging to make it for days. It is supposed to look like this:

Ours turned out like this:
It looked so pretty in the picture. I'm not sure why ours turned out looking like a placenta. We haven't laughed so hard in a long time! The freaky think is that I put the layers in the correct red, white, then blue order and somewhere along the way the blue and white layers inverted... Noah had a fun time decorating it anyway:
and the finished product, though not aesthetically pleasing was delicious!
At around 5:30, on the way back from a caramel apple run, both boys fell asleep in the car so I postponed BBQ plans and called the caramel apple dinner. Worked for me! I hope that everyone had a good time!