Let Freedom Ring: Part Two

FREEDOMFEST MAYHEM AND THE PYROTECHNIC SPECTACULAR

We're back with another installment of the holiday antics of the Kent Family which you may or may not find interesting...

So Saturday rolls around and we all sleep in after our night of fireworks. That afternoon (after I worked off my July 4th bbq splurge at a killer kickboxing class that left me sore for days) we headed back to Provo once again for the carnival portion of the Freedom Festival. (I guess Provo has got the whole patriotic market cornered).
Ashton's little group was originally supposed to have a show here, but too many parents called in and said their kids wouldn't be there so they had to cancel it :(
We had a good time though watching Jaden and his adorable ballroom group. I tried to post a few videos that I got, but my computer is having technical difficulties so I am going to have to put those up later.
The main attraction of the place was the free climbing wall, which was a hit with all the boys:





Jaden was the only one who made it to the top, but the other boys had fun trying.

Nearby there was a wildlife handler showing off one of his slimier clients and Jamie just had to get her "Britney Spears" on for the camera.

Disgusting...I would never do that...even for a good picture.
We walked around lackadaisically.

The boys hung out

And Z insisted that Daddy entertain him the whole afternoon. I'm starting to get a little hurt by the fact that my little baby that I care for 24/7 really doesn't like me...or so it seems. He only wants grandma and daddy and I am only acceptable when either of those aren't available. What gives? At first I thought it was cute how much he loved his dad, but now I am offended at being 2nd place, well actually 3rd counting grandma too. Does anyone else have this problem with any of their children, or is it just me?
Anyways, on our way out we finally found a few rides that were old, rickety and way overpriced. Just the ticket to finish off a day at the fair.

I love these next two pictures, just look at Ashton's face coming down that slide...it's priceless. And David took Z down and he completely paniced at the top and didn't want to go, you can see him still trying to fight gravity in this picture. He was more than a little dazed when they got off.



We had dinner at Guru's which is one of my favorite places to eat (for the food) except for one thing. Has anyone ever noticed that the staff there are always complete snots? I hope it is not just me, but it seems every time I go there they seem completely annoyed to have to do their job and worse they have posted "tip your server", "tips for karma" etc. etc. all over the counter and cash register several times. Now, I was a server for over seven years and I heartily believe in tipping well at restaurants and places where it is appropriate. But I get really annoyed that all of the sudden we are expected to tip everywhere so that business owners can justify paying their employees less. The only thing these people do is clean up the table after you leave and they don't even give you the option of throwing away your own trash as there are none available. That is not the definition of a server.
I don't know why I went off on that tangent. But here are the boys at their own table, which they were pretty proud of:









Okay, so back at home later that night it was time for David to unveil what he deemed a "Pyrotechnic Spectacular"

(i.e. he gets to play with things that light up and explode). Looks like Ashton is going to take after him in this department.


What kind of hyperactive sparkler is that, you may ask. That's no sparkler, it is some sort of rocket thing that I don't believe he should have been holding, but there I am taking pictures of it.
The night was marred slightly by some potentially poisenous rootbeer floats. While the boys got things started with the fireworks Jamie and I were in the kitchen making everyone refreshments. Just as we loaded them up on the tray and I was putting things away, I noticed a huge gash in the top of the ice cream carton.

(I am noting that I look completely hideous in that picture but I am going to sacrifice for the sake of the story)
So, fearing that someone may have gone into Wal-mart, slashed open the ice cream carton and injected it with lethal poisen, we had to throw them away....(hey you can never be too careful, right?)

I had to include this last shot because as I was forcing Jamie to document all these things for my blog she started complaining at how much the trash stunk and then we both couldn't stop laughing...

We did go get more ice cream and rootbeer so the night was not a complete loss and here is the firework grand finale:




Unfortunately, our neighbors were launching celebratory explosions of the illegal nature, so there's were much more interesting and we got a lot of this:

But David's show was pretty respectable and all that was left of our 4th of July activities was this:


...And some pretty sleepy kids and exhausted adults. Till next year!
(If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations! That was really long....I need to start editing myself a little better, they get so long that the spell check won't even work anymore!)