Social Distancing for the 4th of July Weekend

Jr. had a couple days off of UVU Prep before the 4th of July. Plus there was the weekend. Here are some of the things we did while social distancing that weekend.
Thursday we went to a park for a walk and a story. Paul Ream Wilderness Park. This was a park we meant to come back to after visiting for Park Week when Jr. Jr. was a baby but we never did. Funny how things like that happen... or don't happen. 

Friday we went for a drive up Nebo Loop. We stopped at Devil's Kitchen. It rained on the drive up so by the time we got to the parking lot, there was only one other vehicle there and those people left as we were getting our picnic items out. During our time at Devil's Kitchen, people did come and go since it is a short hike and there were different levels of raininess. In fact, after we got our picnic stuff out, it started to really rain, enough that a few of the kids went to eat in the van and Dad and Mom started reminiscing about growing up in the Pacific Northwest. I realized I forgot to bring a big blanket to cover the stroller so I had to make do with the extra blanket I had in the diaper bag to protect Jet from the rain. He did all right.

When the rain stopped, the children in the van came back to finish our picnic at the table then we packed things away and went on our hike up to the Devil's Kitchen overlook. As Jeremy put it, "We're done with the dining room. Let's go to the kitchen." We were careful to keep to the side of the trail and tried to turn our faces away as people went past us. Then as we were at the overlook, a family came up and waited for us to come out to the main trail before going in to the overlook themselves. Way to take turns and social distance, people.

There was plenty to see from mountain chickadees to green-tailed towhees to squirrels to rocks. In fact, July 3 was Drop a Rock Day.

Lucky: Whoops. I dropped a rock.

It was a nice socially distanced outing for the family (and we got another reading badge from it).
Since July 3 was also Eat Beans Day and Jr. really wanted burritos, we made some when we got home.

I didn't mention it earlier, but Jeremy was outside Friday morning and got to see a hot air balloon floating in the sky.

Jr. helped menu plan for the 4th of July so here is some of what we ate.
To celebrate Sidewalk Egg Frying Day, we ate fried eggs for breakfast. For lunch we had chicken Caesar salad wraps to celebrate Caesar Salad Day. And as it was Independence Day, we had Patriotic Pasta for dinner along with watermelon and potato salad. The patriotic pasta was based on The Food Nanny's red-and-white mostaccioli like we had for April Fool's Day this year. We used red canned spaghetti sauce, white alfredo sauce (using the Guiltless Alfredo Sauce recipe from Our Best Bites), and we colored bow tie pasta blue. Red sauce + white sauce + blue bow tie pasta = patriotic pasta.

The pasta was sort of blue. Because we used blue food coloring on yellow pasta, it ended up a little green. Oh well. Some pieces were more blue than others.
Speaking of The Food Nanny, I used some of my birthday money to get myself The Food Nanny Rescues Dinner. That made some of my children very happy because we've used that book quite a few times since we had it checked out from before the libraries closed back in March.

After dinner, we roasted marshmallows inside with Jeremy's new heat tool (for bending PVC) to make S'mores. Yum.

That night we went to the sidewalk to watch fireworks. Because of Covid-19, Stadium of Fire was canceled. So instead they set up simultaneous fireworks shows in three different locations and set the fireworks off higher than they normally would so people could see them from miles around. We could see two of them from the sidewalk even if it was between buildings and over fences and they really were the same fireworks show. Pretty cool. The show lasted about half an hour and a local radio station played music to accompany the fireworks.

Here's Lucky jamming to the music.

Hey, Nichole, the fireworks are over there.

No, that's the moon. I know it's a lunar eclipse but it's not a total eclipse so you can't really tell.

There you go. Just in time for the finale. Wow. That's a lot of smoke.

Sunday, July 5, was Graham Cracker Day so we had s'mores ice cream and Hawaiian haystacks since it was also National Hawaii Day.

There wasn't as much physical distancing at the end of the weekend with a trip to the emergency room one night and the after hours pediatrician the next night. I don't want to go into details but even though Jeremy and Jr. had to be in close proximity to doctors and nurses, they both did wear their face masks and the doctors and nurses wore theirs.