Independence Day - Small Town Style

In the heart of the midwest, July 4th usually means hot and muggy.  Yesterday was anything but.  If you ask the kids, they’ll say it was COLD!!  Jeff and I say it was perfect.  It got into the low 70’s, but there was a chill in the air for the morning and evening activities.  Because I’m stingy with the A/C, I try to avoid using the oven in the summer, but yesterday I baked!  Jeff took the kids to the annual airshow at our small county airport and I stayed home to bake four loaves of bread and a double batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.  This is my kind of weather!

Here are some pictures of Jeff and the kids at the airshow:

The National Guard was giving out free t-shirts to anyone who could do 5 pull-ups.  Go Jeff!  The kids were impressed!

When they got home, we had a small flag ceremony, complete with the Pledge of Allegiance, in our yard.

Then we ate a quick lunch and walked to the County Courthouse for the parade.  In our small town parade there is always tons of candy and several interesting parade entries.  My favorites this year were all the old fashioned tractors.  In this picture you can see one of the tractors as well as a glimpse of our beautiful County Courthouse:

Just in case you missed it, here’s a close-up of the sign on the tractor:

I love it!  After the parade, we played in the yard:  Sam and I threw a football around and some of us played frisbee and Bocce ball.   We had a yummy BBQ with the missionaries (Sisters and Elders) that evening.  Here’s a picture of Jeff and Elder Whiteley riding “Maggie”.

After dinner we headed back to the airport for the fireworks show.  We threw the football and frisbee around some more (my arms and back are killing me today!)  There was music playing and Sadie seemed oblivious to the thousands of people around us as she danced her little heart out.  Play the video below to see her dancing.  Towards the end of the video, you’ll also see Sterling and Soren in the background, sword fighting with glow sticks…  

There were a couple of fun airshow displays before the fireworks.  In one of them there was a car (it looked like the General Lee) out on the landing strip.  The announcer was calling for security saying that someone broke past the barricades to get onto the runway.  This all happened just as a plane was supposed to take off for a flight display.  So the guy in the car pulls up right next to the plane which was waiting on the runway, gets out of his car, hops in the plane and takes off.  He was doing all kinds of crazy flying and it looked like he’d crash a couple of times.  He finally landed it and they announced that it was all a planned stunt.   I knew it was, but the plane looked out of control at times and was still a little unnerving to watch!  When it was completely dark, there was another airshow with a plane doing several acrobatic stunts with his lights on and the smoke coming out the back.  It was all choreographed to music and was pretty impressive!  The fireworks display was impressive as well.  Soren and Sadie wore Jeff’s sound-cancelling earphones so they wouldn’t be afraid of the booms.  That worked great and we all enjoyed the show.

It was a perfect day!