Another 4th of July

The parade:

We started out the morning by parking ourselves on the side of a usually-busy street. As we anxiously waited for something to happen we were entertained by a pair of helicopters which went up and down the parade route. The big one would occasionally hover right above us. This was simultaneously scary and wonderful. It was hovering very low. The rotors gave us the most fantastic, strong, cooling wind (it was a sweaty day), but it was so low I couldn't help playing out the worst-case scenario in my head and trying to figure out if we'd have time to grab all of our children and fling them to safety if the huge whilrlybird should suddenly drop from the sky.

We enjoyed an endless stream of slow-moving trucks often pulling boats full of elected officials, church congregation members, business owners, swim teams, collections of classic corvettes, clowns, horses, marching bands, and of course the Andy Griffith Rerun Watcher's Club (almost all of them handed out candy too...our favorite float was the one that handed out bottled waters).Lunch and games:

After the parade we headed over to Grammy and Grandpa's for a lunch of roasted hot dogs and tons of fixin's followed by a roasted marshmallows dessert. We played some 20 questions with the kids and Grammy had some patriotic and fun little gift bags for the kids which included colorful sunglasses...Josh kept his on most of the day.

The intermission:

We crashed at home for a few hours to regroup and watch The Sound of Music (Emma and Ben: loved it, Josh: kind of really boring (except for the doe-a-deer part), Lydia: MIA).

The dinner and show:

Then the fun day continued as we grabbed our good friends from the ward, the Stoners, and headed up to the Cruze Compound. There we met the Conan and Callys, the Rachel and Terrys, and a family the C&Cs brought (I don't remember their names, but their one-year-old threw up at the end of the night...how's that for first impressions? Now any time we happen to see them again we'll say, 'Oh yeah, you're Pukey's mom and dad.'). Here we first had a delicious picnic dinner,then started our fireworks fun in the waning twilight. First the snap dragons and smoke bombs:Next came sparklers, then it got dark enough for the heavy artillery. No photos of this portion of the fun except for this one of Lydia enjoying the privilege of staying up way past her bedtime and eating tons of candy.The show was spectacular, but the minor burn injury of one member of the audience (I'll leave the particulars to his parents to tell) due to a rogue firework shooting sideways left us feeling like maybe it's time to hang up our pyrotechnics hat and try something like this next year instead.