Happy Fourth of July!

First of all, Happy Fourth of July!!!!  I started out my day with this.  I had planned on getting up, doing speed work, and heading to work.   I have a few hours of work to do (thus the blog) and I wanted to get it done quickly so I could head back to Wamego for the festivities.  Our town does it UP on the fourth.  I think I have heard that our town goes from 3,000 people to 40 thousand in one day.  We have the carnival, which has been going on the last few nights, the parade, and the biggest 4th of july fireworks show in Kansas. It is all hand fired and timed to music and it is AMAZING!  Seriously proud to live in a little town that does such an awesome job with this holiday.  I even shed tears during the parade because the patriotism is so touching.  I was really worried that this year would be the year andrew would freak out about the fireworks.  Not so, well, so far.  Last night, our neighbors set off a bunch of really fancy expensive waste of money in my opinion fireworks and we watched from their patio.   While he jumped a few times, he was not scared and would clap after the big loud ones, so I hope we are good to go tonight.  The best part is we can view the entire show from our house so we don't even have to leave, and can just go upstairs and watch from the window if we have to.  

I really do love running in our town.  We are blessed with an abundance of gravel country roads and beautiful morning views.  It was a perfect running morning.  Got 7 in for the day and feeling good.  Even did some hills in town to mix it up.  Just have speed work left for this week.  Ready to get a plan in action though!  I know I won't do hard speed work on my own:)

Stella and I barely broke a sweat this morning.  I wish summer could be like this the whole summer.  60 degrees at 6 am and no humidity.  This is the life.  Stella loves running in the big muddy puddles that the irrigation systems leave on the gravel roads.  She also loves running in the wet dew filled morning grass too so is a mess after our runs.  Thank goodness she dries quickly and brushes out easily.  

I leave you with a pic from last night.  We took andrew down to the carnival.  He still isn't really old enough to enjoy riding the rides and I am okay with that (holy crap, 22 bucks for a wrist band!!!).  I was tempted to try the carousel with him but after the last trip on a carousel at my first half marathon in St. Louis, i thought again.  He was content just watching the rides go and walking around the booths.  His uncle cayce and daddy played a few games and they won a blue dinosaur and a stuffed banana for him.  At 3-5 bucks a game, I thought two games was enough.  We did let andrew play the duck game.  That was always my favorite when I was a kid, even if it is rigged.  The food as always was delicious and all four of us split a funnel cake.  Yum.  Hoping I ran off those calories this morning:)