4th of July Highlights

We spent the 4th of July in Cranford this year.  First time the boys got to see fireworks and I was able to cross one item off of my "bucket list" -  to run in the Firecracker 4-miler.  I am no real runner and two years ago, I'd thought it had been impossible that I could ever complete a 4 mile run.  But I ran two 5K's last year so I decided to train for this year's race.  I completed the race without stopping to walk, though my running pace is not far from a walking pace.  I finished in 41:41 (or 10:25 pace miles).  Brian raced too and finished much faster in just about 30 minutes.  He has decided to sign up for a half marathon in October so this is just the start of the training plan for him.  Here I am coming into the finish:

On July 5th, we headed to our friends' house for the annual 4th of July Olympic games.  If you can't tell, Eric was thoroughly enjoying his plate of Doritos:

 And Evan enjoyed the slip-n-slide:

Onto the events - first event was Skeeball with 3 buckets, tennis balls and a broomstick (1 point for a ball in first bucket, 2 for second, 3 for third) and with a 60 second time limit.  Brian and I won this event.

The most comical event of the night - Tortilla Head.  You had 60 seconds to get as many tortillas onto a plate using flippers on your feet to throw the tortilla into the air.  I actually had to sew a headband to a plastic plate (which had holes drilled into it) so that the plate could be secured on our heads:

I actually got one on my plate:

And Brian got two . . . which means our team won this event too:

This was the couples relay - had to race down to one end with a frisbee between your foreheads and then race back with a ball at the waist.  Brian and I did not win this event:

Onto the blind race.  This one always provides a lot of laughs and Brian and I won this one too:

The last event was the water balloon toss and no pictures of that, but we finished 3rd there.  But for the full day's events, we took first place for the second year in a row.

Eric was having a great time on the swings:

The 4th of July was an action packed and fun weekend, which was the perfect kick off to begin our summer!