I love America. Oh, and pictures of an awesome storm.

For the Fourth of July, Provo has a balloon festival. We got up early and walked over to it and it was quite exciting seeing the balloons inflate. Sadly the weather was too sketchy for any of the balloons to launch higher than a few feet. But I loved seeing an enormous Tony the Tiger! Kevin looked up what it would take to own a balloon and charge people for rides. He can tell you all about it, but I think my reaction was, "Let's get through our scone venture first."

Me with Miss Anna. You might remember her better as Miss Entrepreneur.

On the morning of the Fourth of July, we ran a 5K in Soda Springs with Myrna, Amy, and Rick. It was a lot of fun. I felt so good after it was over. We ran it in under 40 minutes. The run was in the memory of a good friend of the Hoopeses that passed away in an avalanche in February. They do this run every year and last year Kevin and I opted out since we hadn't trained for it at all. I was glad to participate this time around. We don't have any pictures of Amy and Rick finishing the race since they smoked us to the finish line!

Oh, sweet victory!

Can you see us? Kevin's in the orange t-shirt. I think I'm looking at the kid next to us in jeans with disdain because the whole race he would run ahead of us and then walk for a while and then run ahead again. I was determined to beat him in the end . . . slow and steady wins the race, right? Well, I can report that we did outrun him on that last stretch!

About an hour before we were going to watch fireworks, these ominous clouds started rolling in:

We waited out the crazy storm with lots of hail, thundering, lightning, and rain. Luckily it didn't last too long, and we enjoyed a nice firework show.

The calm after the storm.