Saturday

Saturday was really fun. A friend at work told Chad about the US Air Born and Special Ops celebration in town where they would have parachuters. It was fun. We had to wake up and get a move on. We sat in the shade of this hummer. But we had about 10 min. until drop time, so we did a few of the festivities... big trucks and big guns. I forgot my camera, so all of these are Chad's iPhone pics.

Everett fired the big gun on top with a loud click.

They dropped one guy with a chain of smoke attached to him. He made some pretty swirls.About 15 min. later the plane circled back around and dropped 8 guys at once. Three of them hung back while the others came in and landed, most of them in the very middle of the target. They introduced each as he came in. One had over 3500 jumps under his belt! I love the hummer and soldier silhouetted in the foreground here. Chad's got some photography talent! I also like how the sky was all patriotic with the residual red smoke.

And here are the 3 that hung back

Very cool! After that we went back through the hummer and then stood in line for the tank.
Chloe wanted to see out and ask questions while Everett was all about figuring it out for himself, in other words, pushing buttons and pulling levers. He switched it from 4 wheel drive to 2 wheel drive with another loud click. Yikes. I guess they can't do much harm with it off though.Then we went through the medic tent. It was really cute watching the soldiers prep each kid for surgery and let them pretend on the dummy. They gave the dummy a shot. Chloe loved it. She's been pretending ever since. Everett wasn't so keen on it all but wanted to do whatever Chloe was doing, as usual.

Chad got the kids dog tags at one of the booths too. We didn't stay for all of the speeches and whatnot. We didn't even go to all of the trucks and booths; we weren't there long. Instead we headed over to the CF River Trail for a family bike ride.

It's a really great trail, mostly shaded, with several bridges that go over the river and along side the railroad tracks. It's 4 miles with some big hills though and not for the faint of heart. We had a lunch packed and headed out thinking we'd stop on the trail to eat if we had to, then go home. It took us a long time. We kept stopping to walk up hills, let the muscle burn subside, drink water, lots of water, and check out turtles, streams, and waterfalls. They even have a water station about half way with coolers full of ice water. Eventually we did make it to the end!

The park was mostly just soccer fields, but there was a pavilion where we ate lunch. We rested, but of course the kids were ready to play. Chad sat for a few minutes throwing a frisbee down a huge hill to them. They played with the camera on Daddy's phone a bit more and played a bit in the water hose where we refilled our water bottles. The trip home was much easier. Funny how tired the kids were when they just sat in the bike trailer. Nasty as I was, I just wanted to curl up and take a nap. But we did a smidge of house work instead. It was a long, busy, and exhausting day, but a good one! I'm really grateful to Chad for planning fun things like this for our family. And I'm glad we heard about the celebration. We all really enjoyed the day's festivities, and most of all enjoyed doing it together!