4th of July...The 22-hour Day!!!

We were up at 6:00am and off to Provo to see their Freedom Festival Parade...pretty impressive with 105 entries including great bands, floats, balloon characters, horses, etc. Dad and I got good seats and had fun taking a ton of photos, and the weather wasn't too hot. Then we strolled around the booths...tons of people and hard to navigate. We went 5 blocks west to the Farmer's Market to see Autumn & Leslie & David's booth of hand-made items and eat a tasty lunch of barbacoa tacos, etc. Afterwards we went to see Airie and Abram and their new condo. It's a big step up from the "garage apartment"--roomy (it will look roomier when the moving boxes are unpacked) and in very nice shape with fresh paint and moldings and lots of other amenities. Next we drove home and prepared for the BBQ hamburgers and trimmings on the deck with the Stansbury Barkers...including raspberry picking and running through the sprinkler for Brie and up-the-hill-down-the-hill walking with Colby. At 9:45pm we attempted to see fireworks at Lagoon (which they didn't do,) but we were able to catch the show at Oakridge Country Club. By 11:00pm, Donette and kids were headed home while Baron, Dad and I decided to tackle our first "Night Caching!" We drove up Emigration Canyon to a trail head and set out on a mile-long hike in the dark with headlamps and flashlights looking for bits of reflective tape to guide us to the cache. Fun, fun, fun. We were following along a stream, which we crossed twice in muted moonlight as we heard coyotes howling in the distance. We found the cache around 1:15am, trekked back, headed off to Stansbury Park to deposit Baron and finally got to bed around 4:00am. Wow! what a way to celebrate the 4th of July!! (Luckily we could sleep in until 10:00am the next day.


Minutemen with the 4-gun salute



Antique Fire Truck

A personal favorite...twirling shrooms!

The field is white already to harvest.

Drummers

Llamas sporting red, white and blue!

World War II Tank

Dino Float!

Teddy in a hot air balloon basket.

Fancy Horsey.

Eagle Balloon

Check out the hats.

Awesome Tiger...our favorite Big Balloon.

Dalmation & Clown & 3-Wheel-Mobile

Go Cougars...we hope.

Y-Mountain and the Bell Tower.

3-passenger motorcycle?

Shiny Tubas.

Onion Days...surely Dad's favorite.

Giant Paddington Bear

Immigrants on tall ships coming to America...reminded us of Albert Dock in Liverpool.

Another ship...Capt. Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl.

Bagpipes #1

Bagpipes #2

Bagpipe Major!

Off with their heads!

Patriotic Ponytail.

Mom & Autumn at the Farmer's Market

The booth.

The frame I purchased...custom made by Autumn with my choice of beads.

A&A happy to be moving into their new condo.

Brie and Froggy.

Grandma & Colby walking up and down the hill.

Blowing the twirly.

Patriotic Raspberry jello.

Cream Cheese Flag with salsa, olives and grated cheddar.

Fireworks #1.

Fireworks #2--Heart.

Fireworks #3--Starburst.

Fireworks #4--Finale!

Baron & Mom with headlamps at the Night Walk to Remember cache...1:15am.

Dad with the double reflective tapes marking the final location.

Wonton Cache'n finds the cache in the trunk of a huge "double tree" in the Pinecrest area of Emigration Canyon. Fitting finale to the 2009 4th of July.

Berries and Birthday Booty

Brie found this pinecone at Thanksgiving Point Gardens and painted it a beautiful raspberry-red color, added a pink polka-dot ribbon to make it into an ornament and gave it to me for my 60th birthday--her idea completely. Thank You! It's beauteous.

The cool and rainy month of June brought about a bumper crop of beautiful berries...best we've ever had in 30 years of raspberry plants. We've been picking 3 to 4 quart-sized ziplock bags of berries every other night for more than 2 weeks now and we've probably got another week to go. We've given them to family and friends and co-workers and frozen some for future jars of jam. I even dipped a few in melted dark chocolate for a special treat!! Wish we could transporter beam some to the Hillsboro Barkers!

June 29th brought me a bunch of birthday goodies...chocolate addict T-shirt from Briton & Robin along with a lucious Chocolate and Hazelnut bar (German) (I'm afraid I devoured it before this photo!), a car (of course) birthday card from Talmage, and a crazy-classic mobile card from Briton, a webcam from Dad (along with the hot air balloon ride), foot cream and body lotion and yellow hand-crocheted slippers from Airie and Abram, a flower-flag T-shirt with visors and earrings to match from Baron & Donette, and a unique floral applique and embroidery T-shirt and green & purple bead bracelet from Autumn. Not too bad getting older when you can haul in all this great loot! Thanks everyone!!

The Ultimate 60 Mobile.

Thanksgiving Point Gardens

On Thursday, July 2nd, the gang met at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi to celebrate Mom’s birthday. We ate some great sandwiches/wraps…tuna melt, reuben, philly steak, ham and cheese to name a few…and then spent an hour+ walking through the gorgeous landscape of trees and flowers and water features. It was rather cool, but it didn’t rain on us. Thanks to Autumn for the discount and to everyone for participating. What a wonderful memory for #60.

Outside the Deli and Bakery.

The "fairway" from the starting point to the columns...which we reached much later.

Purple petunias plus.

Shasta Daisies, my favorite.

White Hollyhocks.

Pink Hollyhocks reminding me of my grandmother Bernetta Bell Brown's garden and the dolls my sister and I made when we were little girls using toothpicks.

Yellow and deep purple.

What are these lovelies? Related to foxglove?

8 on the path.

Pink whatever.

On Monet's bridge with water lilies below.

Dad, the master photographer.

Feeding the Koi!

8 in the gazebo.

Follow the red brick road.

Pink-striped Petunias.

Brie in front of the giant violin fountain.

The violin pools or bathtubs.

The fabulous finale, or at least 1/2 of it, truly amazing waterfalls, about 8 of them. We later walked across the bridge on top of them.

The birthday girl about to open presents!

SIXTY--hard to believe it!

60!!!!!--Actually I’ve had sooooo much fun partying that I haven’t had time to grieve.

It all started on Friday night, June 26th. Dad and I attended a free concert in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square—Scottish Bagpipes and Drums. The group was called the Wasatch & District Pipe Band, based in Bountiful with members from Ogden to Payson. The Pipe “Major” is a math teacher at Bountiful High School. There were about 16 bagpipers and 10-12 drummers, plus a group of young girl dancers who did the Highland Fling and the Sword Dance. The group performs and competes, has received a number of awards and are planning a trip to Scotland in 2 years. The music was loud and lively and we enjoyed it. (It was supposed to have been presented in the park, but due to the rain—a real thunder bumper and downpour just after we got seated—it was moved indoors.)

On Saturday we got up early and spent from 9:00am until 6:00pm distributing another 5 cubic yards of bark around the rest of the yard. Ugh, our backs are sore! We’re all done except for the rocks in the moat which we can finish in an hour or two. At 8:30pm we drove to Park City for dinner at Ruby Tuesdays and spent the night at the Landmark Inn in Kimball Junction…exit to Park City. I got up at 5:30am the next day for my Hot Air Balloon Ride! It was a great experience lasting 3 hours. I spent an hour sailing through a cloudless sky on a beautiful morning. We reached nearly 12,000 feet…a mile high above the ground (Park City is already about a mile high). It was so calm and peaceful. We traveled about 5 miles total at a speed of 5 to 6 miles an hour. We actually got to land twice because a small puff of air carried us over a fence away from the pick-up crew. We got to help inflate the balloon and pack it back up. We celebrated with a champagne/orange juice “toast.” What an experience! (Maybe I'll be able to post a video later.)

Our balloon named Gold Digger (with gold metallic patches) is just about inflated enough to turn upright. Another balloon in the background is just taking off with a bigger (up to 12 people) basket. A third red balloon is floating up and away from us.

There are 5 passengers (Sara and son Issac from Payson, Skylar and Rochelle, a young couple from American Fork, and moi the birthday girl) and the balloonist pilot (Will originally from Austria with 14 years experience), ready to launch! Our basket (it's only about 6' x 4') has a small rectangular hole in it just below me (maybe 6"x10") to step into and fling your leg over the edge to get into the basket. There are liquid propane tanks on either end of the floor.

Up, up and away...sailing, soaring over lush green Park City.

Looking straight up into the top of the balloon (yellow circle) as the flame heats the air.

Looking down at a parking lot over the edge of the basket as we descend after an hour of "skywalking" (the company name is Skywalker.)

This shot was taken at about our highest point, looking west, you can see the Great Salt Lake and Kennecott...we've caught up to the multi-colored balloon.

The Wasatch & District Pipe Band in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. The Pipe Major is standing on the left facing the band. Four girl drummers are on the back left twirling their pompom drumsticks, 4 more drummers are below them and there are 2 bass drums, center back.

Scottish lassies ready to perform the Highland Fling.