Utah's Birthday

Friday night we enjoyed fireworks as the Rauhala's, and then, as usual, we spent our 24th of July weekend at Wellington Pioneer days. Rory and I were over the parade again this year and it happened to be very eventful.  It started out with Derk lining up the back of our parade the wrong way.  Once we got that all straightened out we started the parade and everything was going great until a little boy fell off his float and got his legs ran over!  It was super scary.  Luckily he was ok, but it was a very traumatizing thing for him and the kids on his float (Kadee was on the float with him and said he just leaned over too far and fell forward).  Because of all the chaos of that, the highway patrol accidentally started letting traffic through on the eastbound lanes, so Rory and I had to stop a few huge diesels from plowing through the middle of the parade.  I was so relieved when that parade was finally over! The kids had a blast in the parade though, Matthew was on our ward float, Kinlee was with Dance Technica, Kadee was with the Rising Raptors float, and Connor rode with Laurie and Don on their Christmas Vacation RV float.

After the eventful parade, the girls danced at the park.  They both did great and Kinlee is getting so good at doing facial expressions.  The kids love all the free activities at Wellington and stayed all day.  Sunday we went to my mom and Gary's for their annual fireworks show.  It was a great show!  The kids had so much fun playing with their cousins, eating s'mores, giggling, and watching fireworks.

We also did a little family history lesson this weekend.  We dug up a flag pole that has stood at grandma Archie's house for 56 years and put it in our front yard. Rory shared this on Facebook: "Any of my family recognize this?? For a lot of the grandkids and neighborhood kids this was "base". This flag pole stood tall and proud since 1960 in my Grandma Azella Bradley's yard. I wanted it to be proud in my yard, so I transplanted it to my yard. I cleaned it up and fixed the old hardware on it and proudly erected it in my front yard. The flagpole was put up by my Grandpa Archie in 1960 in his yard and dedicated to my Grandma Azella's father Azell Thayn. He served proudly in WWI and the American Flag he gave my Grandpa flew proudly for many years. I'm so happy it is flying a new flag that can be enjoyed by all!"   

This is a really long post, but there is a lot to post about!  Our community is doing a Back the Blue parade this weekend at International days, as a tribute to our law enforcement.  Although we are headed camping, Rory and I wanted to be involved so we bought the kids and ourselves Back the Blue t-shirts and I made a few signs for the fallen officers of Utah.  I only made 3 signs, but I wanted to share one on here to remember the law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty.  Our cub scout troop wanted to get involved as well, so we made  Law enforcement survival kits to deliver to our Wellington Police and our Sheriff's deputies.  Of course Matthew and Kinlee are mini scouts, so they wanted to help too!  So proud of them!

Rick, Justin, Rory, Brandon, Jeff, Cletis, & Vickie