I didn't sleep much last night. I woke up sick :(. With everyone sick, we decided to keep our germs to ourselves and stay home from church. This was sad because we had a friend in Rapid City waiting for us to go to church with them. :(. Oh well. We all slept in as long as we could. Then we slowly got moving for the day. Once everyone was ready, we did our own Sacrament meeting and Come Follow Me. I slept most of the day. The kids were starting to feel better but they were still down for the day. It's not fun to be sick:(.
Around 6 PM I started to feel a bit better and the kids were obviously feeling better by their crazy energy. Mt. Rushmore does a show at night and usually does fireworks for the 4th. They didn't get the approval this year for fireworks, which was a bummer. We all wanted to go and see the show so we cleaned up and drove up to celebrate the 4th with our Presidents!
Every time we walk down this hall, I am so impressed with the feeling of patriotism here. As we social distanced (I didn't want to give anyone our cold), we walked down to the amphitheater and got seats for the show.
There were tons of people there.
The boys went to get a photo shoot for their social media. I had to post these pictures. They are so cute. I love that Taj was in them.
We brought our glow in the dark sticks.
Then the show began. One of the park rangers read thoughts from Thomas Jefferson about how to treat people around you when you don't agree politically. Basically Jefferson said to listen, be kind, don't cause contention and don't expect to teach someone when there is contention. I thought the words were timed perfectly. Then we watched a movie about the creation of Mt. Rushmore. They also included bits of the lives of the four presidents. I loved all of it. Then the best part, we all stood and sang the National Anthem with our hands over our hearts. Oh man. It was powerful. After that, they asked all the people in the crowd who are serving in the military or who had ever served to go up on the stage. I couldn't believe how many people went up there. The Park Ranger said that this was the largest group he had ever seen. We are all able to say thank you, then they started chanting, "USA". The whole crowd chimed in and we were all yelling USA together. I have never been in a place that we chanted USA together. My kids were very touched and inspired by this. There were no fireworks, but it didn't matter. The feeling of patriotism over powered us and we stood in awe as we felt so grateful to live in the country that we do and for all the men who were instruments in Gods hands to create our Constitution and other documents of our freedom. We as a family, love our country and the inspired founders. I also want to put a plug in for James Madison who with Thomas Jefferson played a huge role in religious freedom. Religious freedom is very important to us and to God. I pray that we may alway keep that freedom.
The program closed here.
On our way out, everyone picked their favorite state from the trip.
Not sure why Taj chose Arkansas. It think he just stood by the closest one:))
I can't even begin to imagine how that must have touched your heart - the great July 4th celebration (even without fireworks), and how everyone stood by their favorite state sign. We missed you at our ward celebration this morning. It was one of the best ever. Get well and travel safely!
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