VA Trip

James and I had the opportunity to go and visit my family in Virginia for about ten days. We had so much fun introducing Deacon to his cousins and hanging out and visiting some new places for James. We flew in late on a Friday night, spent the following day in DC, went to Richmond and took some family photos (although Jennifer is the only Hutson present), went to VA beach for two days (Deacon's still a little iffy on the ocean), went to Gettysburg, PA for two days where we went on the cemetery tour and also a ghost walk, had a picnic at a state park, and flew back home. It was a whirl-wind vacation and next time we go we are definitely going to take it much easier. Deacon was not down with the two hour drives we were taking on an almost daily basis. Anyway, here are some fun photos from our trip. As a side note, I did not take most of these. I seem to be in a photo-taking-funk. I just don't want to do it!

Independence Day

This year we had a packed fourth of July. Last year we didn't do much because Deacon was only ten days old, so this year we decided to go all out. The night before we were out for a walk and our neighbors were lighting off some (illegal) fireworks from Wyoming and they invited us to join them. Unfortunately, this meant a very late night for Deacon and he was quite crabby on Monday, as we had him up at about 6:30 to get to State Street to reserve our spot for the Murray parade. After the parade we went home, tried to take a nap (which Deacon refused to do), picked up dinner and headed down to Sandy, where James' brother is a volunteer fire-fighter. Sandy also had a parade (pretty much all the same stuff as Murray) but we had much better seats (until someone squeezed in between us and the curb-thanks random people!) Their kids kept stealing all of our candy. Anyway, after the parade we hung out, played games, ate some yummy funnel cake, and watched some awesome fireworks. Next year I need to bring my tripod, you can tell I'm a bit shaky on the fireworks shots.

Murray Park Flooding

The last few years our local park has flooded to a crazy extent. The high amount of winter snowfall, spring rain, and rapidly rising summer temperatures cause all of the tributaries to the Jordan River to flood from the runoff. This last week was really hot and we took some pictures of the flooding. Yesterday, on the fourth, it was much MUCH higher. In fact, one of the main streets that we travel frequently was closed when we were coming home from the fireworks last night, and we assume it's because of the flooding. We are glad we don't live too close to these tributaries, but it's always interesting to see. Last year Murray park was completely unprepared for the flooding, but as you can tell, they sandbagged the streams early this year and removed footbridges instead of having to rebuild them once the water goes down.