I woke up early in the morn on July 4th stressed out for people who were in charge of our little community breakfast and fun run and other festivities. It was pouring rain outside, hard, and there was thunder and lightening. I thought the holiday fun was going to be ruined. It still looked drizzly when we woke up at 6. Corey and Mel had volunteered to help with breakfast, so they headed over. The fun run was at 7:00. Joseph had been training and his best time during his trial runs was 12:06, then with each subsequent run his time increased. I thought the rain might improve his chances of winning if people who were going to run bailed out. Well, I called Corey to see if the party was still on, and it was, so I dropped off the older kids for the fun run and went home to finish getting the little ones ready (Poor Lily was beside herself, she couldn't find her fun run t-shirt). We got Sophi out of bed and headed out. When we came over, the crowd of fun runners was just leaving the gate. I walked it a little bit of the route with Abi, Lily and Sophi. We walked down the street and were at the school when we saw Joseph come around the corner on his way to the finish line. There were 3 guys in front of him (3 tall and bookin' it teenagers, it was going to be a close finish) and then Joseph was coming with another guy. I turned around to head back to the finish line and when we saw Joseph I asked him what his time was. With a big and proud smile he said "11:35". My best time last year was 13:11, his best was 13:48, so major improvement for this little up and coming track star. SO, next year, I am going to let Jospeh take the lead, I'll let him set the pace and if I can just keep up with him, I should be able to win the women's division. Then I'll let him keep the trophy. Great job, Joseph, he was so happy, he said that that was the best part of the whole day "I like improved my time by 40 seconds!!!"
After that we enjoyed breakfast, then I went home, cause I didn't have the mental or physical capacity or desire to keep track of 3 little girls in a big crowd of people.
We didn't do much during the day ~ Corey took Joseph and Melodie to a movie as a reward for them being such great helpers at the breakfast with cleaning up and serving, much to the other kid's disappointment, but he asked them to help, they didn't want to. They didn't know a movie reward was on the line, and it probably wasn't at the time, but Corey was really thankful for their help.
That night we had a little bbq with family and then hung out over at the neighborhood "
Circle of Fun" - no fireworks this year since they weren't allowed past 27th east. But from our neighbor's backyard we could see them firing off all over the valley, so I thought that was really cool. It made me think of how it might have really been for our country's revolutionary heros, different battles and skirmishes all over a city trying to win it for their country. We had a panoramic view of the battle for Salt Lake last night. The kids played basket ball, had popcorn and cotton candy, and ran around with their friends throwing glowsticks. Ethan was disappointed he wasn't able to light any fireworks and wants us to step it up next year, maybe we'll go to a big show put on by the city. We went to the Sugarhouse fireworks a lot when I was a kid, maybe we'll do that next year.
