Saturday, July 11, 2009

4th of July Balloon Festival



To view the whole set, click here.

On the 4th of July, we got up way too early and went to the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Provo. I overslept a little more than I wanted so we didn't see the balloons take off, but it was still a lot of fun. The balloons would go up or down to catch breezes in different directions and they would try to come back to the field where they started so that they could drop bean bags onto targets or pop helium balloons that were tied to long strings. Once in a while they would fly right over our heads and they came close enough that we could easily see the people in the baskets and hear the roar of the flames as they heated up the air in their balloons.

On the way home we stopped by Macey's grocery store to get some supplies and they were giving away free french toast and doing demonstrations with mentos and diet coke.

During the day I dismantled our gazebo that had been severely damaged by the snow. It took a while, but it's mostly completely in little pieces now. All I needed was a screwdriver. Hopefully next week I can take all the aluminum from it to the recycling center and get a few dollars.

That night we all drove down to Provo High's soccer field and watched the Stadium of Fire fireworks. We had to wait a little while, but we had brought some books to read and glow sticks for the kids. A bunch of other people there had brought store-bought fireworks and it was fun to watch them light them off. The fireworks finally started and we had a good view of them from where we sat. There was a long gap in the middle where everyone was confused about whether the show was over or not. My friends later told me that they were retiring an old flag in the middle of the fireworks show. It was a nice show and when it was over, it was really easy to get home. We had barely any traffic at all. MUCH better than trying to drive home from over by the Provo temple.

We Made Flubber!

Wow, we haven't posted for a while. I'll try to post a few this weekend to catch up.

IMG_2899I had the day off on July 3rd and I decided to do a craft or something with the kids since I don't get a chance every day. I'm usually so busy on weekends that we never get the chance.

I remembered that when we were Cub Scout den leaders, we did an activity where we made some kind of slime with white glue and borax. I did a Google search for white glue and borax and found a bunch of recipes online for GAK or Slime or Play Putty or Flubber. I picked one out and it went something like this:

GAK

Ingredients:
8oz white glue
Warm water
Borax
Food coloring (optional)

1. pour the white glue into a platic bowl. If you poured out the entire bottle, put some warm water in there and shake it around to loosen up the remaining glue and pour it into the bowl also.
2. Add some food coloring to the glue if desired.
3. Mix 1/2 cup of warm water and a teaspoon of borax in a disposable cup. Stir it until it is as dissolved as you can.
4. Start stirring the glue mixture and slowly pour in the borax and water mixture a little at a time. Keep stirring and adding the borax mixture until it is the desired consistency or the glue has soaked up as much of the borax as it can.
5. Pull the mixture out and start kneading it. It's ready to be played with!

When we made Dante's slime, we accidentally only added half a teaspoon of borax. His slime was much looser and stickier. It was fun to play with, but it stuck to your hands a little. We then added more borax water and it hardened up like the others.

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Click here if you want to see the entire set of pictures.