Our busy 4th

We got up on at 6am and got ready to go to Kiwanis park for our race. We decided to park at my old complex (Sparks) to avoid the massive traffic. We jogged to the park and got in the starting line. After the mayor showed up, the gun shot and we were off. It really wasn't that bad. It was only a mile- but there were a lot of little kids running with their parents and they would randomly stop in front of you and you had to dodge 'em. It was just on the edge of the park that we ran and then at the end we funneled in with 5k runners at the finish. We ran through the shoot together- and we don't know our times. It looked like they were only timing the 5 and 10k runners (who could blame them for not posting a time for the mile run? hehe). Anyways, it was really fun though. We got free shirts and even medals- we must be cool. We grabbed some oranges and water and headed back to the car after cooling down.

We came home to find all the streets closed because of the parade. We watched it for a little while and we figured that it wasn't worth it to watch the whole thing. Then we relaxed for a few hours. George came over to visit (Jon's friend from home). He was really coming over to show off a truck he borrows from his roommate. I would have to say that Shane would be blown away by this one. It was huge, and even though George is tall, he looks puny next to it.

At 1:45pm we headed over to Nate and Jess's house to get ready to go tubing down the Provo River. We headed out after loading the car with bbq stuff. The people we talked to told us that they were located up in the canyon right after Bridal Veil falls. We got to the lot and there was a big shack and a little shack. The little shack had no one there, just a few tubes. The bigger shack looked a little more not sketchy... if that makes sense. We paid and after a half hour we got on a school bus and they drove us to where we were going to start. We got there and they were handing out tubes and Jon and I happened to be the last in line and instead of getting a tube equipped with handles and a donut hole with a bottom to it- we got these plastic white donut tubes with noting to grip or hold on to. The current was really strong and the water was FREEZING!!! Jon got caught in the current faster than the rest of us and shot down quite a ways. It was my turn and i shot down and my tube kept gravitating towards the trees on the side of the river and couldn't do much to get out of there. Finally, Nate and Jess got to me and pushed me out and I held on to their handles. Needless to say- this was NO lazy river!! We had to watch for rock and random stumps and try to stay away from the sides so we didn't get caught in branches. There was one time that Jon fell out of his tube- don't worry we had life jackets, and he had a tough time getting back on. Jon and I finally met up and we were holding onto each other because our tubes were so crappy. We then tried to paddle with our sandals to keep away from the sides. That didn't really work. I went flying into a tree trunk and my tube flipped over and Jon caught my life jacket so I didn't float away. After getting back on my tube it became a little easier for a bit until Nate and Jess got to us. It was really fun, but i'm not sure I'll be doing that any time soon! Not to mention my arms, back and chest are super sore from "paddling". It was fun though.

Then we headed over the Nuns Park and got out Nate's UFO grill and had some burgers and corn on the cob. Yum! Later we tried to find fireworks. We walked up to the Y parkinglot and we could see a few, but the view wasn't the best- so we drove to campus and we enjoyed the fireworks that were put on by the Stadium of Fire show. Then we went home and went to bed... talk about a full day!!