3 days of 4th of July Events--Family b-b-q, Freedom Run and Parade

To continue the celebrating of the holiday we met Sunday with the Wilson group at Dan and Brandee's house. There was a great patriotic message, lots of food, and playing around as well. We had a great time.

I think that the adults were all downstairs watching a movie and playing a game and Brandee was upstairs taking care of the little kids. She bathed my kids, put Rubie in some p.j.'s and gave them a snack with their own movie. Brandee is such a great mom.

They are in heaven.

Monday morning I got up early, along with Carolyn to head into Provo. I dropped Carolyn off at the Hot Air Balloon spot. She was going to meet up with her RAH friends to help with a fundraiser pancake breakfast. I went on East to Kiwanis Park with thousands of other people. There I met up with Heather, Carlee, and Sarah to participate in the Freedom Run 10K.

We each were sporting a pair of Zoots. Some new, some broken in.

Sarah was out to set a PR for this 10K. She wanted to do it in 40 minutes or under. She challenged me to join her in that goal. I said I would try, that would be a really, really fast run for me and I did not know if I could do it. I started the race out with her. We picked some ladies out of the crowd that we thought would be contenders and tried to stay with them or pass them. We started out fast and we were a little worried about that. The start of the race is uphill, not too much just up 9th E., but it does spread the runners out a bit. Then we get some downhill and flat, which makes us fast. When we hit the half way point, 3 miles, we were 18 minutes into the run. I couldn't believe I was going that fast. It was at that point though that some runners and volunteers at the aid station converged and squeezed me back a bit and I never managed to quite catch up with Sarah again.

Our friend Roberto Melara managed to snap this picture of me as we passed. He saw Sarah but couldn't snap a picture fast enough.

These were the only pictures I could find of me that Zazoosh got. That is me coming into the finish.
I managed to complete the race in 42:09. Sarah got her 40 minutes. I was the 12 woman overall finisher and 3rd in my age group. I received an email to go and pick up my race crystal but never managed to before the time ran out. This was a super fun race. I ran hard and felt really good about it.

After the race I ran up to Angela's where I had parked. I changed my clothes and Russel drove me to University Ave. where I met up with Carolyn, Lloyd, Scott, and the kids at a spot the Carolyn's brother had saved for the family to watch the parade. The parade was very enjoyable. The kids loved it. There were a lot of great floats and entries.

That afternoon at home I packed my bags for girls' camp which I was leaving for the next day. In the evening we tried to do something a little patriotic by letting Eric and Rubie wave flags and play with sparklers.

Ah! Fire!!

Oh Cool!

I have fire!

3 days of 4th of July Events--Saturday Hike

I can blog again!! As I just got back on track from such a busy start to the summer, our computer contracted a virus. Ughhh!! That was awful. It happened just two days before Scott was headed to Costa Rica. He is the computer guru in the family. So for the whole week he was gone I had no computer. When he got back he diligently squeezed time into his busy schedule to try to get it fixed. At one point we seriously thought about just dishing out some money and replacing the machine. That was going to be pricey and we aren't ready to do that. Being the smart man that he is, he talked to a few different computer guys and geeks and got their advice and opinions and was able to save all of our documents and pictures (thank heaven!!!!) but basically had to rebuild the machine. Doing that, I do not any more have any picture editing program, and I just figured out today that I do have something to at least view and get our pictures to add to the blog. Back in business. Next I have to figure out if I upload pictures from the camera to the computer and view them and figure out how to file them to find them again.

Anyway, back to getting the blog up to date. I am now way far behind at the beginning of July. If you follow our blog--Sorry.

Since the 4th of July fell on a Sunday this year, it turned into a 3 day holiday. The Stadium of Fire was held on Saturday the 3rd. Scott volunteered with his radio skills to help out at the Stadium of Fire. So we hooked up with the Jarvis' for a fun family hike in Rock Canyon.

A few minutes up the trail from Rock Canyon Park and we run into this gate. It provided a few minutes of entertainment for the kids. Probably more if we didn't move them along.

It was a very hot day. This drinking fountain became a favorite. Rubie decided to get the full effect she must be right up on the drinking fountain where she could get right into the water. It was also at this spot that we or rather Karl "literally" ran into us. He had just finished an epic trail run.

Noah and Eric following Karl up the trail.

Rubie tends to dally behind. There are a lot of things to catch her attention.

Where is Max and Sarah?

Oh, here they come.

The boys find some pretty yellow flowers. Since Rubie is a girl they figure they are supposed to give her the flowers. She also found the pretty necklace. Which quickly became a hot item between her and Max.

More flowers.

These are nice but what am I supposed to do with all these?

Along the trail we spotted a cave. The boys climbed up into it and imagined what it would be like to be an animal living in the cave.

Or what it would be like to camp overnight in it. Noah even laid out plans where everyone would sleep.

The trail gave us a beautiful view of Utah Valley.

Most of us moved on, but Rubie just wanted to sit and enjoy...who knows what.

You want me to keep hiking?

She was pretty much done. We finished the hike, me mostly carrying Rubie. I don't even remember what we did next. Probably just went home and carried on a normal routine as Scott would be really late at the Stadium of Fire.