Fantastic 4th with the Fam

To sum up: I had a great time this past weekend being with family and celebrating the 4th of July.  It was Natalie's last few days in town before leaving for El Paso to start her career as a reporter, and George and his family were in town from Hawaii.  I went out to Grantsville Saturday evening after spending most of the day doing Saturday chores in Salt Lake (laundry, jogging, cleaning my room, library, TJ Maxx, etc). Later that night I went over to Kimi's parents' house to help set up tables and chairs for Sunday's festivities.

Sunday, new baby Cole Spencer Tripp was blessed in my parents' ward and then there was a fun lunch gathering at the Cole's house. (That baby has 3 last names!)  Good food and good company and lots of good quality "Uncle Jake time".

Austin and Elise had a great time in the big hammock

Elise still enjoys borrowing my sunglasses (the one on the right is from our family trip to Park City 2 summers ago)

Monday morning (the 4th), a bunch of us (me, mom, Natalie, and George) were going to run the Ray Barrus 5K, so I tried to get to bed at a decent hour. Was probably awake til 11:30 or so anyway.  In any case, the race went well (see here for a few more details), and somewhere there is actual photographic evidence of my running. (Kimi was at the finish line with her camera), but I don't have those pictures yet. Maybe if you're lucky they'll show up here someday.

For now the best I can do is this picture I got from Natalie's Facebook wall:


After the race (and about an hour of waiting and medal/trophy/raffle presentations), I headed home for a quick shower and then it was back over to the high school to watch the parade.  I mostly hung out with Austin, and he had a great time watching the motorcycles, fire engines, police cars, trucks, and even got excited about a "van car" at one point.


Austin watching the parade

After the parade, I headed back home, had some lunch, and then spent a few hours podding peas, while my mom was out doing the hard work of picking them. Eventually my dad finished up his duties at the park and joined in the fun.

Natalie and Cole

Around 4, George and family showed up and we had a delicious BBQ, followed by fun times with a slip-n-slide (though I think George got as much use of it as about anyone else), and about 10 boxes of "snaps".

George on the slip-n-slide

Elise going for a ride

Enjoying an ice cream sandwich

Throwing snaps

All the single ladies, all the single ladies

Finally, it was time to head back over to the park for the big fireworks show. Given Utah's new fireworks laws (which I can't say I'm a huge fan of), there were plenty of reasonably big fireworks going on for the hour preceding the "official" show.  I watched the big show from the back of dad's truck sitting next to Austin who was super excited to be sitting in his very own chair in the back of a "pickup truck!".


Hanging out by the tennis courts waiting for the fireworks

At least half the fun of the fireworks was watching them with Austin

After the show, we headed home, and the cherry on top of our great day was our first email from Elder Tripp since his arrival in Hawaii last week. Turns out he's on the big island, which makes me the only one of us Tripp kids who hasn't been over there yet. :)

All in all, a great day, and the only bummer was that I had to drive back to Salt Lake so I could be back at work on Tuesday morning.