Independence Day

For the 4th of July, we went to the North Pole Parade and to the festival afterward. It was cute but only a small town production. We had some fun though.

Santa, of course, makes an appearance for any North Pole parade.

A True Sourdough Alaskan Truck (sourdough is used up here to describe an old timer, like an old mining prospector)

Everyone here proudly claims the "Farthest North" club, council, you name it!

and the award for surprise participants goes to . . . the Missionaries! They entered in the Bed Race and so they wheeled their racer through the parade. The carried a poster saying "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Call . . ." and they gave the number. They later placed 2nd in the race.

Grace had a great time at the festival doing all the games and kid activities.

Dunking a friend of mine from substitute teaching up here. Grace laughed at getting wet herself!

Bounce house with slide

That's my girl! She's doing laps!

Another unique event, the Greased Pole Climb. No one could do it on their own, so some participants collaborated and split the $100 prize money.

That evening, some visiting friends came over for hamburgers and hot dogs. (The Gessels were stationed with us in Florida and are now stationed in Anchorage.) We topped the night off with some firecrackers, smoke bombs, tanks, racers, and a couple parachute guys. We couldn't do the colorful stuff since it never gets dark to see them. That was kind of a let down.

I miss laying out on a picnic blanket watching huge fireworks while listening to patriotic music. I have fond memories doing this with my family many times, also watching them with Chris when we were dating, being so close to feel the fireworks in Dallas, and going to Addison Texas's Boomtown Festival where we watched Top Gun on a huge outdoor screen. We watched fireworks sitting with our good Florida friends in Destin too. Grace loves fireworks the pretty method, but this year, she got scared of all the noise and eventually retreated into the house. Kyle didn't like it either. We had to cover his ears to keep him from crying. The boys had a great time though. They managed to pop a Sprite can in the air, blow some watermelon rinds in half, and set a smoke bomb off inside one of the tanks.

Grace lovin' her watermelon.

The boys giddy over prepping for their next experiment.

Poor Kyle's fireworks watching method. He did really good though, especially considering this was 9:30 at night!