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!