4th of July

Grandma Megan arrived a couple days early in preparation for our trip to Hawaii to get aquainted with our house, our neighborhood, the kids' routine, and to give Amyah a little time to warm up to her. She came into town on July 3rd, so we were able to spend the 4th of July with her before we left. Because we are in Arizona, I've been dreading the HOT 4th of July we were going to celebrate. We woke up in the morning to clouds and a huge cooling in temperature. Instead of already nearing 100 degrees, it was hovering around 80.

We started the morning with a ward pancake breakfast at the park behind our house. The weather was perfect! For the first time in over a month, the kids were able to play at the park in the middle of the day and the adults were able to enjoy the cooler temperatures. It was so pleasant outside.

We went to Madagascar 3 after breakfast in the park. It was funny and everyone enjoyed it. When the movie finished, we headed to the exit and realized it was completely dumping rain outside! Pouring rain so hard Kevin actually took his flip-flops off to run for the car because it would have been impossible to run with them on through the river of rain water on the ground. It continued to softly rain for a few more hours. The temperature dipped all the way down to 72 degrees at noon time. Totally weird and so wonderful! We had planned on swimming later in the evening after dinner. We still went swimming. By that time it had warmed up a bit, but it was not even close to a typical Arizona summer day. I don't think the heat ever reached as high as 90 degrees outside.

Later in the evening, after pizza and swimming, we headed over to the mall parking lot (which is only about 5 minutes from our house) to watch fireworks over the Peoria Sports Complex (the spring training facility for Mariners/Padres). We met with a big group of friends from our ward. The kids had fun running around and having Pop-It wars with the other children.

After the firework show, we rushed out of the parking lot quickly to avoid traffic from the stadium. We made it home quickly, put the kids to bed, and made all our last minute preparations for Hawaii. We planned on waking up at 4:45 am the next morning to be to the airport in time!