4th with the family

Soo for some reason, unbeknownst to myself, my family wanted to fly out to Utah this summer for our family vacation. ...Utah? But it's so HOT and WATERLESS (and yet...I still live here?). Anyway, just not what I had in mind for a typical Shannon family vacation.

However, it ended up being way fun. Even though it lacked water and did not lack heat. 

On the 4th, we all (minus Spencer) did the Provo Freedom Run. This is the second time my family has spontaneously decided to participate in a city run. I'm not sure why we all of the sudden pretend like we're all great runners, but we do. We woke up at the freaking butt crack of dawn, got geared up in our super fly matchy-matchy shirts and drove to P-town, where we were actually....late. The race had already started. "Crap!! But how will I know what my true time will be?!" I sarcastically thought. We still did it anyway..just kinda jumped on in there. 

Because we're not the previously mentioned "great runners," we just did the 1 mile race. I think my time was somewhere around 9 minutes, which, for not being a runner I was pretty darn proud of. My brother and sister-in-law are a little more into running and showed us all up with their 5k skills. But, we still got the same shirt, water bottle, and even a medal, so I felt just as accomplished. ;-)

We celebrated our attempts at athleticism by scarfing down delicious crepes and waffles at the Awful Waffle. We were justified...right?

The rest of the day we hung out at mi casa, watched the little girls swim in Jillian's kiddie pool, and indulged in a Mexican fiesta (also not sure why we had tacos on a day where we should've been eating tons of hamburgers and hotdogs...another weird family quirk).  

Unfortunately, fireworks were not in our plans...you see, there are certain things you just know you have to give up when you have a small kid, namely one who freaks out at the slightest bit of loud noise, fireworks is definitely most certainly one of them. Fortunately, since we live in a valley, we got a pretty good glimpse of like 6 different firework shows as we were driving up to the cabin we were renting for the next few days.

I didn't know I had a fear of bears until we were driving to said cabin. Especially when we got on the little back dirt roads in the middle of who freaking knows where in the pitch black dark of scary Utah wilderness night.  I kept picturing us driving past an angry bear who would then chase our car down, pull us out one by one and eat us all up. Eek! 

It was fun all being together at the cabin for a few days.

Jillian & Nana playing peek-a-boo

S'mores!

We rode the Heber Creeper, which did just that...creep. I think my nieces loved it though. My Dad fell asleep. 

My Dad signed us all up for a "high adventure" excursion while my Mom played Nana to the grandbabies all day. We rode these things up and down the side of mountains:

And consequently feared for our lives. I may or may not have peed my pants a little. There were times when the trail was literally only big enough for the ATV, and if you looked over the side (of the freaking cliff), you probably would've screamed like a little girl.

The "high adventure" included kayaking down the Provo River. I suck at kayaking. Also, the Provo River is frigid and next time I'm taking a freaking wet suit. My arms were definitely feeling the burn...and because I forgot to slather up my legs with SPF 15, so were my legs. Oops. Pasty girl problems. 

Driving up to the cabin at Strawberry Reservoir did help me realize that not all of Utah is a dry, ugly wasteland. There are actually some very pretty things to see! Maybe I should get out more...as long as there won't be bears...