Busy 24th

I know this update is a little on the late side but I was waiting for a few pictures to come back from the photographer. The photographer was Lonna's sister Paula, and I wouldn't have had to wait for them to be e-mailed to me if I didn't have a major brain fart and forget to take my own camera to my own kids running event. I did have my special "never rings" cell phone with me and got a great picture of Kelsie running across the finish line, and then forgot to save it. I just can't get used to the dumb thing.

Any who here are some pictures from the 1 mile fun run on the morning of the 24Th, the bright and EARLY morning. It wasn't that bad, as all the 10k runners were filing in, the kids were lined up to start. That's Devin running with Kelsie on main street. This other picture is after the run when she is turning in her tag for the drawing after. Too bad she didn't draw out for a prize, I could have... I mean SHE could have won 18 holes of golf at the local golf course.

After the run we walked to our reserved seating located on the Zion's bank lawn to watch the parade. I would have been able to get out of having to go to the parade this year but my excitement over the prospect of not working the night before confused me and by the time I ran out of the hospital to go home I remembered that I would now have to go to the parade. I gotta think these things through. As you can guess, no pictures of the parade because of the aforementioned brain fart, no biggie, I didn't know anyone in the parade this year anyway.

The big event of the day was the Taste of the Valley. They tell me that this thing has been going on for about 15 years, the idea is that you pay $30 for a family of four or $8 per person and that lets you go around to all these booths that have been set up by local restaurants and sample their food. To me it sounded like going to an upscale Sam's Club and getting to eat all the samples that you want without someone giving you the evil eye for trying to sample the cheese and crackers again. This year it was held at the courthouse building under the trees. We were so excited to get there that we were actually 10 minutes early, this allowed me time to get a pre feast picture of my girls. See, I even brought my own camera this time.

Apparently this turned out to NOT be an all you can eat sample fest, but not all is lost, they give you a fancy wrist band and a card with all of the restaurants logos on them and when you visit their booth they punch your card so if you really liked the gelatto (more about this fiasco later) and wanted to try all the flavors then you were out of luck. So we were of to our first tent, since we were first timers to this we really didn't have much of a strategy to begin with except we knew we didn't want to fill up on the giant slab of bread first. I swear it was 2 inches thick and there were places like P.F. Changs and Tucanos.

As we went from booth to booth we quickly realized why all these people were carrying the funny boxes, they must have been the veteran samplers because they were loading the boxes with all the food then they would sit down and eat. They obviously knew that the lines would get longer and that after eating your first plate your 11 year old would tell you that she is full. It wasn't too long after that Alyssa started to show signs of slowing down. That kinda worked to my advantage at the P.F. Chang tent with their offering of a rib with some weird cinnamon salt dust and a lettuce wrap. I ended up eating 3 ribs and Lonna got the kids' wraps. Man! what a great tent that was.


The longest line by far was the gellato, this is a picture of how long it was. The second tent from the last on the right hand side was where it ended. It must have taken us 30-45 minutes to finally get up there. They had 6 different flavors to chose from and you could get up to 3. You just can't offer people a choice at a sample fest! And there was only one guy scooping! And then you had to spend those 30 minutes listening to the guy in front of you tell his friends how he has to go back to the dentist because he has gingivitis. This had better be worth it. Turns out that it was. Get the lemon, it was the best.

Family fireworks just before the big Spanish Fork City fireworks. This is usally how we round out the day of festivities, probably because we don't have to go very far to see them. This year seemed to be even noisier than before probably because eveyone stayed home. There must have been 20 different firework shows going on around us. The illegal firework were of course the best by far.