24th of July Celebrations

Next to Christmas, Pioneer Day is my favorite holiday (as long as I live in Utah, that is. I can't imagine the Mormon holiday of celebrating "This is the place" would be too big a deal in, say, New York!) But I do live in Utah, and Spanish Fork is probably the best in it's celebrations! Fiesta Days is over the 24th and so many things are going on throughout the week, but the day of the 24th is the best. Since both Doug's family and my family are from Spanish, we have a day filled with tons of activities. First, the city parade. We have compromised on sitting with my Johnson family at Central Bank (oh how I miss the wonderful location of Grandma Brown's house on the parade route). Frankly, I think he has agreed due solely to the fact that every year without fail Aunt Sue brings her famous puffed rice balls and Lecia and Joyce bring warm Krispy Kreme donuts! We were lucky this year and caught an overcast sky for most of the parade, and fortunately there weren't the usual 4,000 baseball and softball teams. The parade was pretty good!
After the parade we headed up to Doug's Grandma Higginson's for their annual 24th party. This is really the only time of year that everyone from his extended family is present. With his family growing so enormously huge (Grandma H just welcomed her first great-great grand baby and has well over 100 posterity) it's hard to get everyone together, so it is always really fun to see everyone. Doug's immediate family hung around long after everyone else was gone and had a fun time just sitting under the old shade tree, listening to the brother's fish stories (sorry, but that's all they are. Every tale gets larger and larger each time we're together!)
After briefly stopping by the craft fair (even though I rarely find tons of stuff I like I just can't help myself from attending - although I did find the most adorable headband for Brooklyn's birthday in a month), Aunt Sue's house was our next stop for dinner with my extended family and the all-too-traditional ham loaf. This isn't as big a hoopla as Doug's party, due to the fact that we see my family at least 2 Sundays a month and we are about 20% the size of his family! But it's still so fun to get together and party it up on the 24th.
Next in line was the Fiesta Days Rodeo! Now I know we already made an appearance at the rodeo this week, but there's nothing wrong with going twice, now is there? And the two occasions are so different because we go with each of our families and always have a blast. It was fun this year with Doug's family watching Brooklyn and Ileigh reacting to everything. Brooklyn couldn't stop pointing at everything she saw, and Ileigh seemed to love seeing the animals (hopefully seeing the animals being whipped, tied, restrained, hung on, and teased won't traumatize the little thing too much!) After the fireworks following the rodeo we definitely called it a night. I don't know what it is about hanging around and doing nothing, but boy it sure drains the energy out of you! That pretty much sums up our Pioneer Day festivities, and I can say that I am already excited for next year!