You know what you never ever hear people say? "I love the 4th of July in Arizona." It's hot, just about nowhere does fireworks and yeah, it kind of stinks. Actually one of our old High Councilmen always invites us over to his family party to watch fireworks from his farm each year and that is pretty awesome and incredibly generous, but nothing is as fun as a small town 4th of July.
Wednesday morning we decided to take a bike ride up to my grandparents grave. And if you read my previous bike riding post, you will realize that anytime we wake up and decide to go on a bike ride we end up doing a hundred things first (like swinging on the swings and taking a trip to Wal-Mart) before we get anywhere.
Wal-Mart was quite the spectacle with all 14 of us. We went to pick out flowers for the graves. Even though grumpy old caretaker throws them all out, we still did it just to spite them and also because my grandparents loved the 4th of July. We ended up with 7 or bouquets (but no peach because Grandma hated peach, and Ellie got irises because they were her favorite) and just as many flags and pinwheels. Take that cranky pants.
The bike ride was comical to say the least. Dave drove behind us with his blinkers on (it's about a mile from the house) and at one point Sadie got off her bike to fill her tire with pretend air because she could only go "99."
I don't cry easily but cemeteries always get to me. There were so many headstones for small children and one family had line after line of babies who passed away a day or two after they were born. Or a sweet inscription for a spouse who had passed in many years before the other. I'm so grateful we had so many years with my grandparents and that they had so many years together.
We headed back home for more Idaho fun -- probably hot tubbing and jumping on the trampoline while Dave got ready for his 4th of July feast. My grandparents always had all the family over for the 4th of July and Dave and Kristine have continued the tradition. We feasted on ribs and chicken, potatoes corn on the cob, rolls, pie, ice cream and szechuan chicken salad.
Dustin and the kids put on their own little show with fireowrks straight from the Res, so you know they were awesome. We didn't set anything on fire (per tradition) but we did manage to end up with a lot of ash in our hair. When it finally got dark (which was NEVER) we headed up to the Matsuura's to watch the firework shows from all the surrounding cities.
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