4th of July

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.

Circle of Fun

I've said it before, but I'll say it again... I love the area we live, such an awesome community.  Yesterday after the fun run we had a great breakfast and then watched the small town parade.  Breakfast for $20 for our whole family of 10.  Doesn't get much better than that.

 

After breakfast there was a flag ceremony, then the annual Granite Parade.  Our kids voted that our neighbors, the Dahle's, had the cutest float of the parade - they turned their boat into a pirate ship and were launching water balloon cannonballs into the crowd.

The other highlight of the parade was when Mr. Ensign, who had come prepared with water ammo of his own, retaliated and fought back, it was funny to see them going after each other.  :)

Then in the evening was the neighborhood firework show.  Last year the party was called the Culdesac of Fire, named after the Stadium of Fire.  But since the real fires are putting a bad spin on the word fire this year, the neighborhood party was renamed the Circle of Fun.  The kids did have fun, with our neighbors breaking out their popcorn and cotton candy machine, we brought popsicles to share, there were doughnuts and brownies, lots of fun.  Ethan had like 12 cotton candy and as he was moaning later that night but received little sympathy from me.  I told him to remember how he felt, that's his body trying to tell him that what he just did, if continued, would slowly kill him.

Melodie just relaxing and watching the show on the grass:

Joe and Hyrum played some b-ball with his tall friend and his tall friends tall father.  I think it was kids against the dad.

Sophi didn't like the fireworks too much, but overall everyone had fun at the Circle of Fun!

Butterflies!

We've been watching our chrysalis attentively the past few days and were so excited that two of our butterflies came out today - amazing! As they got darker and blacker and we could see their wings, I was wondering if/how those little wings would turn into big monarch wings...


Maybe these were miniature butterflies?


Nope, they got big and beautiful. We loved watching them hang and fan their wings.


We all got to play with one of the monarchs for about 15 minutes - it flew onto the grass and then onto a bush and we'd go get it on our fingers before it finally flew away too high for us to retrieve again.


The other one didn't try to fly until it was sure it could get away from all us onlookers and up all the way over the fence, and since I told the kids to not touch it until it left the branch first, we didn't get to play with that one at all, but the kids did see it flutter away happy and free :)

It was a lot of fun. We're excited for #3 to emerge tomorrow and then our baby caterpillar on Thursday.

And my daily discipline report for today (recorded in this food journal):


woke up at 7:30 - went to bed at midnight = 7.5 hours sleep
7:30 - cottage cheese, yogurt, great grains (270)
8:00 - exercise challenge - 400 lunges, plank and reverse plank 3x each for 1 min each
11:00 - chocolate shake and celery (300)
12:00 - wheat thins, cream cheese, tomato (330)
2:00 - ham, tortialla, cheese, lettuce and tomato (270)
5:00 - few chicken nuggets as I made dinner (guessing 150)
6:00 - Vanilla Protein Pancake (300)
Total calories - 1620 and I don't have the munchies or anything, so that's good! Almost 10:00 - heading up to bed soon, hopefully will get the kids in bed and myself too before 11.

And just to be accountable, yesterday I must report that I did end the evening slightly stressed and thus in my weakened condition had two balls of the frozen cookie dough since we were outside lighting fireworks and the box freezer was right there taunting me... Time to own up to my actions and look up how many calories are in those babies. Didn't say on the box, (probably not a good sign if the company is afraid to tell you!) And I couldn't find the nutritional value of Otis' oatmeal chocolate chip online either, but from the types of frozen dough that I found and their calories, I'm guessing each of those balls of dough is 170 calories!!!! Yikes. I've been nibbling on those quite a bit and didn't think they were that naughty. But even with the two balls of cookie dough adding 340 at the end, yesterday was still okay overall at 1800 calories (lucky for me I woke up so late I guess)

And lastly for your entertainment, here's Brian Regan talking about butterflies. I wouldn't have had any questions about butterflies before this summer, but now I might, but we've already looked up a lot of the answers. The funniest part of that clip starts at 1:30. "Don't even get me started!..."