Sundance... Oh and Mayhem at Stadium of Fire!

We spent a beautiful week in Sundance. The skies were amazingly blue, the mountains were spectacularly green, and the climate temperate! Loved it. The boys fished, the girls shopped, did yoga on the deck next to the creek, we all ate well and played games and just relaxed. But the purpose of our trip was to go to The Stadium of Fire! We have never been. It was an all around great experience except for about 60 horrifying seconds! For those unfamiliar, Stadium of Fire is a pretty big deal. It is a huge fireworks display in Utah. It is usually preceded by a concert with big names. Quite the spectacular! Steve got us amazing seats on the field about 20 rows from the stage. As the warm up acts came in, we realized they were seated right next to us. The 5 Browns opened. They are a family of five piano playing siblings that all went to Juilliard. They range in age from 30 to 22. They were awesome. Then a violinist named Jenny Oaks Baker performed with four other female violinists. I didn't know her name before but she is a quite accomplished violinist and she happened to be wearing a pretty blue dress that I coveted. These ladies were amazing (see video). The Osmonds Second Generation performed and like their fathers, they are very talented. Then finally Carrie Underwood took the stage. She was fantastic and I didn't ever consider myself a fan, but now I am. As each act performed they would come off the stage and take their seats next to us. They all had spouses and children including many toddlers and babies sitting with them. You could tell they were very excited to be playing that venue. They chatted and took pictures together. They had their children pose with other performers. Several of them were taking video. After Carrie Underwood finished up, the fireworks began. Unbelievable show! About halfway thru we realized a tower right next to us was a firework launch pad. Up until then I just thought it was for camera equipment. The first explosion from that tower scared the heck out of us and I turned to Steve and said "Well now we know why they made the announcement 'it may become necessary to evacuate the stadium' at the beginning of the evening". I was half joking... but little did I know what was about to unfold. A few minutes later that same tower shot another firework that was again supposed to shoot skyward but it didn't. It shot right into the 5 Brown siblings seated across from us. People scrambled and panicked and tried to grab kids but then there was another explosion and this time the fireworks shot into the Osmond clan and the violinists. By now people were screaming and running and grabbing babies. The violinist in the pretty blue dress laid on top of her baby and the back of her dress caught fire. Steve ran over and smothered it with his hands. I made eye contact with her and I don't think she even knew she was on fire yet. She just had an expression like "Can you believe this is happening???" At that moment another violinist with a long white skirt ran past me. Her skirt was on fire and I was yelling at her to stop and roll but she was frantic and trying to stomp the flames. She finally grabbed her skirt and yanked it off. Luckily she had a slip on. There was a cute couple that had been sitting in front of us the through out the entire show but had moved to lay on the grass during the fireworks and the young man had his hair catch fire and was burned on the back of his neck. This all took place in literally 60 seconds. The fireworks were still going on and Courtney was panicked that more might be coming our way so we hightailed it. We didn't want the baby mama going into early labor! Needless to say it was a little terrifying. Our good friend Scott Jackson stayed behind till the EMT's got there. He said that besides the young man with the burnt neck, it was mostly clothing that burned and none of those many toddlers and babies were hurt! Thank goodness. Needless to say, most memorable Fourth of July ever!!!! In this video you can see the woman Steve helped and the lady who lost her skirt!