24th of July

To kick off the pioneer holiday Dad, Andrew, Bethy and I did the 24th of July 5k and Karin, being the awesome person that she is, ran the 10k.  It was a great way to start the holiday and was so much fun!

The 5k started at the Energy Solutions Arena and it was a beautiful morning!

Half of the route was along the roads that the parade goes down, so we had plenty of excited supporters lining the streets while they waited for the parade to start!

We all got pretty cool medals at the finish line!

That night we all gathered at the Griffins for our annual BBQ!  As usual, the place was decked out in all sorts of festive decor, most of it made by Nora!

After dinner and some games, it was time for fireworks!  This year's show was pretty impressive, I know I included a lot of firework photos, but I think they are so awesome to photograph so don't get bored of them half way through.

Nora's face is priceless

Purple rain was a crowd pleaser, it was one of all of our favorites it had such awesome, vibrant colors

We saved the frog and owl for the finale since they were the biggest packages.  They certainly didn't dissapoint!!  They last such a long time and put on quite the show!  I loved how their faces lit up!

After the show, it was time to play with sparklers!! This year I brought some fun different types of sparklers to try out.  One kind was neon, and they burned in all different colors!  They weren't as vibrate as I would have hoped, but they were still fun.  The other kind were HUGE sparklers, they were as big as some of the kids!

Thomas really enjoyed the fireworks but the sound of them scared him.  Luckily, Ricky had his noise canceling headphones in the car, so he enjoyed the firework show to the soundtrack of Pixar's Cars.  Haha, his cute little double chin.  It was a very happy holiday!