Between yesterday's parade and today's festivities, I'll have a lot to smile about for a while now.
We hosted a neighborhood BBQ in our backyard this afternoon for the second year in a row. We have a fantastic group of neighbor friends on this base (old and new) and the kids all get along famously. And the best part is they're all BOYS the same age (today: 10 boys, 2 girls). My kids were in little boy heaven.
We ate early so that we could leave early and head to town to get a good parking spot for the fireworks show. They shoot them off at the racetrack we frequent so we parked across the street from it in a huge shopping center parking lot, threw a blanket on the roof of the SUV and called it good. Since we were there so early (it filled up fast), the kids and their friend watched the Sandlot on our car DVD player and then crawled up on the top of the truck to throw Pop-Its onto the pavement until the big show started. For being a small town, the firework show is impressive and lasts a long time, and since we can park so close we feel like we're right underneath it.
Last year, we learned the miserable way that once the firework show ends it's a mass exodus out of the parking lot, and it took us (are you ready...) TWO HOURS to get home (normally 20 minutes). This year we planned ahead and said NOT THIS TIME and purchased a huge box of (totally legal) fireworks to shoot off in the parking lot while everyone else suffered in their unmoving line of cars. So the kids stayed on the roof of the truck and we shot off fireworks like rednecks and once we ran out of those, we abandoned the kids on the car and Brad and my friend Sarah threw themselves into two abandoned Target shopping carts while her husband and I pushed them around in a sudden shopping cart race, which I could barely push because I was laughing too hard at Brad and his legs sticking out and the humongous hole in his pants that he had caused tonight.
Who says you have to act old once you hit your thirties?!
Once we actually got in the car to leave, the traffic jam was over, and it took maybe five extra minutes to get out of the parking lot.
Brilliant.
Happy 4th of July!
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| The boys and their buddy Calvin throwing pop its from the roof of the truck |
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| Look guys, I'm in a picture! |
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| The Dads trying to get the fireworks to light. Jess was trying to stick a flag in one of them. |
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| Our own personal show, and the boys got a front row view on the truck! |
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| After each firework, Brad would jump high and stomp on the depleted firework box and the boys would laugh and laugh. |
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