Vacation Part 8... 4th of July Picnic and Fireworks...

The Arnold side had planned a full day of activities...
family pictures, picnic, and fireworks

We went to Gardener Village. Gardener Village is an historic area in the city of West Jordan.It has been a long time since I was there last. The grounds are beautiful, and quite popular for photographing families, and couples. In fact, both of Mike's siblings had engagement pictures taken there. It was fun to walk around the grounds and see what shops there were, although, I didn't make it to see EVERYTHING. I still liked what I was able to see. My girls enjoyed some of the stores...

Today we also had a family picnic planned at Michele's house (Mike's sister). The kids had a TON of fun playing together. They really love their cousins.

Matt and Michele gave each of the girls a book to celebrate their birthdays... present and past...


Mark and Mitzi gave Kaleigh an Art kit full of crayons and markers and fun stuff to keep her busy. They gave Ema some Dora the Explorer books.


Grandma and Grandpa Gave Kaleigh more art supplies! Watercolor paper, and watercolor pencils, a sketch pad, and some pencils, and a little bag to hold all the pencils. They gave Ema some wooden vegetables to cut apart in the little play kitchen she got for Christmas.


From there we went to Grandpa Arnold's house because they splurged for the grandkids and bought some fireworks and sparklers to light. We never do 'light yourself' fireworks, mostly because Mike doesn't like to pay for them. Which is surprising be cause he likes excuses for lighting things ;)

After watching those fireworks, we went to Sugar House park to watch the "big" show. My brother and his wife were there and we tried to find them but the show started before our paths crossed and we had a nice spot for photographing the fireworks... so we stopped where we were and enjoyed the show. My girls really enjoyed it!