"Stay"-cation

4th of July landed on a Friday this year. Which makes for a nice long weekend. I decided to take that Friday and Saturday off for the holiday celebrations. And with me not working Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays I got 5 days off in a row. The best part about it was Jesse's 6 days off landed on this weekend. So we got 5 whole days together. Giddy is the word that comes to my mind when I would think about a FIVE DAY STAY-CATION with my little family.

 

To start things off we were invited to go watch the Eaglewood Fireworks at our friend Brett's house. His back deck looks out over the golf course and is really close to where they would shoot fireworks off.

 

While we were waiting for them to start shooting off the fireworks we got eat dinner and watch the sunset. It was pretty awesome. I told Jesse that one day I would love to have a deck like this one and we could sit out there every night to watch the sun go down. 

I was so excited that I got to spend 5 whole days with this guy 24/7. Sometimes it's nice to take a break of the everyday "stuff" and just be together. Having fun! And that's exactly what we were planning on doing. 

We were spoiled being this close to the fireworks. Watching them from Brett's deck was awesome! Every time one of the big loud ones would go off, we could feel the deck shaking. Pretty awesome.

There were other people there at the house. Most of them were Brett's little sister's friends. They all were down on the grass while we stayed up on the deck. But Cy insisted laying on the grass with the young adults. He had his blanket all laid out on the grass and was right in the middle of two girls. We tried to get him to come up with us, but nope.

After the firework show we heard the girls saying how cute Cy was during the fireworks. I guess he kept saying "Oh that one is my fave-wit...no that one is my fave-wit."

I wish I could have heard him saying this, but it was cute to hear it coming from this girl because she thought he was the cutest thing.

The next morning we packed up the truck with all our bikes, camping gear and food to go spend the weekend with the Smith's.

First on the agenda was a bike ride in Provo. The trail was called Rails to Trails. Apparently it's where the railroad tracks used to be and so it's nice and flat with a slight downhill. Nice and easy bike ride. Which was good because we had a variety of experienced bikers. Tayler hadn't been on a bike since she was a little girl. Andrew was carrying Sterling in a little bike seat....

...and Jesse was carrying Cy in the backpack...

...and Ryker was on his own bike. I love this picture of Ryker, he was having the time of his life. He was really impressive that day. All of us have the option to shift our gears to make the pedaling easier or harder. But he doesn't have that option. So he just pedals and pedals and pedals. Several times he mentioned to me his legs were hurting. I just told him that he was building muscle and then he would ride even faster. haha. Our total distance was 11 miles. And Ryker rode the whole way. That is honestly so impressive because I remember a few years ago when I started riding a bike again and thinking 10 miles was a long ways on a bike. And here is my 6 year old doing it! He's awesome!

We stopped around mile 9 to have a little lunch break.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this photo. I had to balance my camera on the fence with the self-timer. Usually when we take pictures like this it takes several attempts to get a good one, but we got this one on the first time.

It's been awhile since we have been able to get a picture of the whole family together. It seems like we always have someone missing. So it's a good one!

After we made it back to the house we all had some down time. The little boys took naps and some of the adults took naps too. Tyson and Tayler left to go back up to Park City to spend the remaining weekend with her family.

When everyone was done resting we started to prep for dinner and get our campsite ready. We had a delicious BBQ that everybody contributed something to. And then for dessert we roasted marshmellows for yummy smores.

I love this tradition of camping out in their backyard. It's so much fun.

Once it got dark enough we had our own pathetic firework show. All the neighbors were lighting up the big arieal fireworks, but we just had the cheep ones on the ground. 

But that didn't matter to us and especially to the little boys. They were totally into it.

We attempted to go to bed when we were all done with our own firework show. But the boys were still to excited. Well I really should just say Cyrus was still excited. Ryker went to bed because he was sleepy, but Cy was hyper. I'm sure the combination of the excitement and smores made for a wired boy. Plus the neighbors were lighting up fireworks consistently until midnight. So we fell asleep to the sound of the booming sounds of fireworks.

 Saturday morning we (the women) made a scrumptious breakfast! Mmmm I love breakfast food. Eggs, waffles, mini German pancakes and berries! We all ate like Kings and Queens. So freaking good.

Then it was time to go to the pool. Usually we would go to the pool that Mike and Heidi own with 6 other families. But I guess it was under construction. So we walked to the public pool in their neighborhood.

Ryker was all about jumping off the high dive.... until we got there and he saw how high it really was. I wanted him to jump off of the high dive SO BAD because I knew once he did it he would love it.... but he wouldn't. He's such a cautious kid.

 Cy on the other hand isn't so cautious. I think I gave birth to polar opposite boys. Cy is almost scary how NOT cautious he is. He isn't afraid of the water AT ALL. He even jumped off the lower diving board (which I wish I would have taken a picture of).

 After several hours of playing at the pool, we walked backed home.

We were all pooped, so the little ones napped while the adults watched a movie and napped as well.

Before dinner we packed up our stuff and headed home. I don't remember exactly what we did that night. I'm sure just bummed around the house and got everything all put away.

It was the perfect way to spend the 4th of July. And our stay-cation wasn't even over yet. YAY!