Independance

I have a love hate relationship with the 4th of July.

On the one hand, I LOVE fireworks. Love them! I like to see as many firework displays as I can, and Logan, Utah has one of the best firework shows I have ever seen.

So we pack up the car, load the kids, and head to Logan for the 4th of July every year.

There is also a parade in Hyrum, where my family is. This is a total small town parade. At least half of the entrants are townspeople showing of their huge new piece of farm equipment, the other half are drivers for the Miller company showing off their big shiny rigs. The thing about this parade that amazes me is the mind boggling amount of candy that is thrown to children on the roadsides.

My children come home with a big ol' bag of candy every year. I put it in a bowl and throw away about half of it in time to replace it the following year.

The parade is also one big huge water fight. Mitch, Sly, and Steven's boys fill up a huge cooler full of water balloons and spend the whole parade lobbing them at people on floats or in vehicles on the parade route. It drives me NUTS! And the people in the parade aren't innocent either, they come equiped with their own coolers full of water balloons and their own squirt guns.

And it doesn't end there! We all go back to Grandma's after the parade for a big BBQ and the bring the water fight home with them. I hate being wet. I don't want to participate but the harder you try to avoid it, the more determined they are to drown you. I dont' want to spend the whole rest of my day looking like a drowned rat, I don't look good AT ALL with dripping wet hair.

The good news is that Mitch and his family are spending three weeks in Italy over the 4th this year so maybe we can skip the whole water fight drama.

The bad part about the fourth is that is the anniversary of Kenna's death. Kim, Kenna's mom is the cousin closest in age to me, we have been really close our whole lives and so loosing her daughter was like loosing one of my own kids. I call Kim's girls my nieces because Kim is as close to me as my own sister and I love her girls dearly.

Kenna's death was a devastating shock for our whole family. I didn't think my grandpa was going to survive it. I can still remember like it was yesterday Kim's voice on the answering machine, her voice was totally flat, there was nothing there, she said "There was an accident, Kenna is dead."

I remember running to my little boys' room and falling to my knees at their bedside and begging God to be with Kim and Bryce and Quincey. To bear them up and give them strength to face this. For some miracle to occur and that somehow Kenna would be ok.

But it wasn't to be. Little Kenna with more life in her than ten normal kids, died in a boating accident on June 29th and was buried on July 3rd.

There is a quote that says "It isn't the years in your life, it's the life in your years" I think of Kenna whenever I see that quote because she lived a whole life in 4.5 short years.

I hope that she and Lucey are in Heaven together and that they are very dear friends, just like her mom and I were as children.