Provo Freedom Festival Grand Parade 2011

Here are some pictures from the Provo Independence Day "Grand Parade" on July 4, 2011.

There are captions where I knew what the picture was of. Not every float/group/etc. is depicted, but a majority should be.

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Pre-parade : everyone is set up by 6:00 AM the day of the parade!

Tuacahn's Little Mermaid float

Tuacahn's Little Mermaid float

Primary Children's Hospital - Kung Fu Panda float

Utah Valley University float

Payson Royalty

Star Wars droids

O.H. Berg, Undertaker - Old time hearse

Cecil O. Samuelson, President Brigham Young University, and Sister Samuelson

Brigham Young University float

Jason Chaffetz, Congressman

"The world is our stage"

Utah Old Time Fiddlers Association

Yogi Bear balloon

Liahona Alumni Band

Sterling Beck, Provo City Council

Moonlight Serenaders

"Living the Sweet life in Springville"

Fred Flintstone balloon

Neil Pitts, President, Utah Provo Mission

Central Bank, celebrating 120 years

Uncle Sam balloon

Tour Israel with AIFL - 1847 pioneers ; 1850 Jewish pioneers, Settle in Utah -->  2011 Still friends

Llama fest

Stars, Stripes, & Strawberries

Utah County Fair - Macey's

Lehi (?)

Utah Community Credit Union

Cowboy Poetry gathering

I thought these mules were so beautiful!

Institute of Religion - Tree of Life float

American Fork

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If you use our pictures, please give us credit and link to our page!

oxox

Welcome to the Jungle

We're glad we don't have to deal with the humidity of a real jungle, but the heat seems to come up at the beginning of our blogs these days. We'll hopefully have that mitigated some due to a few planned trips, a newly Freon-charged car, full-time work in nice cool offices, and a window AC unit.

a flower Thomas picked for Lisa

We've also cooked quite a bit, with recipes like made-from-scratch chocolate pudding, mango chicken (recipe here), peach mango pie, and shrimp salad. Now that we have a more stable life (until school starts), we're trying to take advantage of eating more healthily and exercising more (we're averaging 2 miles/day since Memorial Day).

Mango Chicken

Peach Mango Pie

Shrimp Salad and Salmon

Also of note this week was the 4th of July parade, which, along with the Freedom Festival (for which they close down Center Street and have the Stadium of Fire), happens to be a big deal around here, with people coming from miles away and lining the streets the day before. Some people actually stake out their spots and spend the night. Conveniently the path goes right by our front yard, so we didn't have to reserve any territory, and our neighbour roped off the area and patrolled it through the night for neighbours and friends. We'll post a more complete photo shoot a little later in a dedicated post.

Luckily private property is off-limits for spectators, and we had the rest roped off...

Tuacahn's Little Mermaid float

Sterling Beck, a city councilman

A beautiful team of mules

Some friends dancing to the tunes of the Utah Old Time Fiddlers

Lehi's Dream float

Later that day, we were invited to a dinner. We had great food, met some people, and set off some fireworks.

Guests trying to play croquet in thick damp grass 

Chicken shish kebabs

Our hosts preparing a show

Barbecue pizza

Some of the crowd

What's a party without a pet?

Saturday was a full day. We went to the Jordan River Temple, since the Provo Temple is closed for maintenance...

Lisa

Us

...then Thomas visited a friend while Lisa went to a baby shower for an already-excellent mother...

Baby shower

...after which we went to visit some other family of Thomas' (sorry, we forgot to take pictures).

Other things we want to note:

• Lisa has been working on several projects, including a foray into the art of crochet.
  

  

  "The Birth of a Doily"

• Also, we want to wish a happy late birthday to Glenn Vakalala and early birthday to Grandma Peterson!
• Lastly, Thomas' Grandma Bradshaw passed away this week at the age of 89. The mother of 5, grandmother of 23, and great-grandmother of 32, she was a great example to all and will be greatly missed. Her obituary, mostly in her own words, can be found here. We are thankful for the chance we had to see her just last week and await the chance to be reunited with her and other family someday.

Hot hot hot!

The high temperature today according to my weather widget is 98°F... but since we exceeded the high from yesterday's forecast by several degrees yesterday, I predict we'll exceed 100°F today!

Last Monday, Thomas took the training test for his new job and did very well on it. He's now "official" and we are feeling very grateful that his schedule is the same as it was during his training!

Last Tuesday, I went to a fun little Relief Society activity called "The Hats of Womanhood." I blogged about it here, if you're interested in reading about it!

On Wednesday, we went to the Provo Temple. This temple will be closed for cleaning this month, so we will be visiting other temples for a few weeks like we did last year :o)

I got a few hours off of work at the end of last week because we were all caught up in our cataloging! I used that unexpected free time to clean up our house and do the laundry so we could spend a quiet evening together on Thursday. It was so nice to watch a couple episodes of The Pretender and read some more chapters in a book we've been reading together, Chester, I love you. I got a few hours to myself on Friday, too, which I used to do some craft-supplies shopping... project pictures to come!

Yesterday we enjoyed a very full day together. We woke up early (for us, for a Saturday) and drove up Provo Canyon a few miles to Bridal Veil Falls. We walked along the paved walking/cycling trail and, rather than try to climb up the water falls like some (not-so-wise) folks were doing, we found a fairly easy trail a few yards away from the base of the falls that took us up near the top. The mist from the falls felt great after that climb, and we loved seeing such a pretty place. We walked the paved trail a bit more and stopped for a picnic lunch.

The Provo River is at its peak - a wet winter and spring plus a rapid change into summer make for a very full, VERY FAST river!

Bridal Veil Falls

"Thank you for hiking to Bridal Veil Falls enjoy the cool mist / Hiking & climbing beyond this point is strictly prohibited"

Thomas is getting good with his camera :o)

Afterward, we drove up to Salt Lake to visit Thomas' grandma. We ran into some of her other visitors, there, too.

This is one of our favorite pictures with her from April 2010, just after we got married!

After coming home, we enjoyed an iChat with Thomas' mom and a phone call with my family. Then we went down the street to check out the food at Freedom Days. We brought dinner home and waited for the sun to go down so we could head out for the Stadium of Fire fireworks. Last year we found a perfect location from which to see the fireworks, and this year we went to that same spot. The fireworks show was incredible!! But driving home was a little nerve-wracking, since everyone else was doing it at the same time!

This one is heart-shaped!

These ones reminded us of waterfalls - like the one we had visited earlier that morning!

Thomas' Aunt Judy said, "doesn't that sound so young and romantic, to go watch fireworks?!"

Happy Independence Day!
oxox