Other Highlights Of Our Trip

Here are the kids after getting bathed Thursday night. They clean up nice, right?

Well, I am not sure if it was b/c I had made a request or something else but we did end our camping trip early enough to be able to participate in Utah's 24th of July celebration going on on Friday. I just thought that since we would be IN Utah on the 24th we should definitely make plans to see all that. I mean the entire state basically shuts down for this right?

Here we are waiting in our seats for the parade to begin. We had already had a pancake breakfast at the park which was pretty good. The parade had the theme of "Be Thou An example" but I also noticed another theme about "Past, Present and Future" within the church. Here's a float with some Hatch kids sitting atop. Fun!

Then there were the state champion unicyclers team! They actually did some amazing things on the cycles and all coordinated and in sync with each other. Jeff liked the John deer tractor collection.
Now of course I did not take pictures of the entire parade nor did I put all the pictures that I took on this blog, but I gotta say; I was expecting so much more. I mean this was a little weak. Besides the breakfast before the parade and then the parade...that was it. For the entire day. All I could think was back home in AZ (where we celebrate the 24th for no apparent reason relating to the church history of AZ) we had two days of events you could participate in. Next year we will for sure be staying near our home for the 24th of July festivities.

Other highlights of the trip were getting to see the Idaho cousins who also came for the reunion. Fitting 13 people in a two bedroom one bathroom house wasn't the best but we all got along and had fun! There was a replica of the Vietnam Conflict Memorial Wall on display at the park. So we went to see it.

The kids loved playing with the chickens. actually Kaitlyn practically adopted the chickens as her own and somehow escaped a single photograph being taken to prove it. They have eight hens and four babies. we collected and ate a lot of eggs.

We also went to this dirt track speedway and watched some races on Saturday night. It was really fun but also loud and it got pretty late. We didn't leave until after 11:00 pm and I kept thinking we all needed showered for church the next morning and how was that going to happen as it kept getting later and later. We did stay long enough to win a bike helmet in the raffle drawing though! Woohoo!

Madelyn lost her first tooth at G&G's house. Jeff actually pulled it out b/c it looked infected but still. Kaitlyn also lost one while we were on the mountain, but Jeff lost the tooth from his pocket. They both had prizes waiting on their pillows when we got back home to AZ.

The kids loved getting pulled around on the trailer behind the four wheeler. Grandpa Hatch even saved some bails of hay for them to stack so they could learn "hard work." I think Jeff and Brian learned it more than the kids though~wink~!

And we all (read: Jeff) got really excited in Bluff, Utah on the way up when we pulled up to this teeny, tiny gas station and there was this awesome Lamborghini right next to us pumping gas...

We had a great time. Thanks for letting us come and spend some time together.