Where I live, the town goes all out for the 4th of July celebration. People begin to reserve places to watch the parade at the beginning of the week, and camp out the night before to insure a good spot. There is a small carnival going on, and then an amazing fireworks display at night. It does cost money, and they have really good entertainment (like Hannah Montana and Blue Man Group this year), but you can still see the fireworks anywhere around there. In the morning, they have a 1 mile fun run, 5k or 10k. I signed up to do the 5k. I have discovered that I LOVE to run in these races. There is something about being with a lot of people trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Plus with everyone camping out for the parade, you have a lot of people cheering you on during the entire route. There were a lot of people who turned out to run. Several people had fun with the event and got dressed up in costumes, and created funny shirts or signs to carry. I did well during the entire run. I couldn't believe though that they had us end going up a hill. I need to work on my hills more. But I am grateful to have had this experience, as I now realize I enjoy doing this, and I also have a baseline to go on for my future runs. In fact I have goal to do a half marathon later this year.
This run represents a big accomplishment I have been able to make in my life. About 4 years ago, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to run with her in the mornings. After one week, I had to tell her I couldn't run anymore, as I would be having Crohn's attacks after each run. I had decided then that my Crohn's disease had taken away my ability to ever do any kind of running, or sport similar to that again. So this is really exciting for me to see how far I have come in life since then. Now I love the way I feel after each good run.
To celebrate this achievement I actually made myself a breakfast (I tend to just make breakfast really easy each morning). But I made a somewhat omelette (ended up being scrambled eggs really), with a ton of vegetables in it. I garnished the plate with my miniature rubber chicken.
That afternoon, I went to a BBQ at my cousin Dan and Brittany's new home (really cute home by the way). They purchased a professional type nice BBQ grill Memorial weekend. The food was out of this world (aka - really good), and the people were fun and entertaining. After dinner, we went to the Sandy's 4th of July Parade. That is a fun parade to watch. The majority of the float participants throw candy at us (mostly salt water taffy). The kids around me were having a great time! After we stayed around the area waiting for the firework show. They had live entertainment going on. They put on some great shows. My Aunt Becky, Uncle Dave, their grandson's (Kenny and Ethan) and I danced for the majority of the time. The fireworks show was incredible, and it was fun on how they choreographed it with music.
I think it's funny how in Utah, you will see company's use hymns, or popular sayings within the Church to advertise. Here is a Tax Company float from the parade that said "Count Your Many Tax Deductions Name Them One By One."
