It's Independence Day!!!!

Both last year and this year, we had Jake's family over for the 4th of July.

Last year, we had Jake's mom & dad and his brother 'cuz he was just moving up here.

This year, we had the whole shebang 'cuz Jake's brother was getting married.

Hotel Strain at your service!... No seriously 

Slight confession: I'm not good at taking pictures of people (obviously)

I'm better at taking pictures of the things people do instead :) Oops?

Here are some of our 4th of July firework pictures:

These are all straight out of my camera BTW no editing

ENJOY

This picture is one of my favorites:

It was one of those ground flowers that I just used a really long exposure on.

The following four photos are from Stadium of Fire.

We watch it every year w/o paying for tickets.

It's pretty awesome.

We can hear the music, and have a great view of the light show.

All w/o cost and or traffic.

We just walk around the corner, in our neighborhood, and enjoy :)

Clearly everyone else does too.

There's a great view on the cliffs of Orem

Look at all the cars: (or some of them)

Set aside from all the fun firework pictures, I have one last awesome photo!

This photo is something that's an item on my summer bucket list... Lightening!

I've always wanted to capture lightening. This time? Done

And this is straight out of my camera, taken from our front porch.

AH! I was so excited I was able to capture some of these awesome photos. I have plenty more, but these were just some of my favorites. 

I love long exposure! (Or bulb)

My sister and I definitely had fun capturing these lights.

It was funny- Everyone was clapping when the fireworks would be done doing their thing. As for me and my sister, we'd be sad 'cuz that was the end of our picture.... Until the next one went off.

As Martina McBride would say, "It's Independence Day!" Or it was.