4th of July

 Gavin did not like the loud sirens at the beginning of the parade. Poor guy! :(

 Lily enjoying the parade

 Gavin clapping.  He loves to clap!

 Dog Pile on Daddy!

Playing in the pool

 Danika painting Riley's face

 Going for a ride with Danika

 Playing soccer

 Throwing snappers

 Look at all those fireworks!

McKinley and Parker with their glow sticks

What a busy day! It started out with me running the Freedom Run 10K in Provo with my friend, Kristen.  I hadn't checked out the course until that morning.  Turns out, it had a lot of uphill sections.  I felt like I struggled a bit, but my overall time was about 3 minutes faster than my previous 10K, and I placed 2nd in my age group, so I guess I did alright.  I don't usually run on any type of incline. Guess I need to work on that! Cassidy and the kids met me after the race and we made our way over to the parade.  We were lucky enough to get a decent spot close to shade despite showing up right before the parade.  The kids have been pretty spoiled by the Eagle Mountain Parade which throws out water bottles, popsicles, candy, t-shirts, frisbees, etc.  This parade doesn't throw out anything, so they were pretty disappointed about that.  There were a lot of cool floats, and some unique things, like vaulting on horses, and slam dunking. After the parade, we tried to walk over to look around the tents, but it was so unbelievably crowded, we decided to head to Jamie and Jeff's hotel instead, order pizza and go swimming in their outdoor pool.

In the evening, we went over to Cassidy's Uncle and Aunt's house, Chris and Jillyne, for a BBQ and Fireworks.  We had such a great time! The food was delicious, and our kids love playing with their kids, and all the other cousins that were there.  There were definitely plenty of fireworks to watch on all sides of us.  I think the kids had the most fun with the red, white and blue glow sticks and being able to make them into bracelets, necklaces, earrings, belts, vests, etc. They were very creative. We may just need to make that a tradition of our own!