Is there any red blooded American that doesn't love the 4th of July?
We may not drink ourselves silly (or at all) or do anything crazy, but we still thoroughly enjoy Independence Day as a family. Usually in years past, we'd have a BBQ with friends, or go out on an adventure. Well the weather was trash and everyone was busy, so we had a very quiet day leading up to the evening extravaganza.
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| How Camden ate breakfast this morning. |
We dawned our patriotic socks and sunglasses and spent the morning playing Legos and making treats. Of course Kodiak let us down with a shortage of red-white-blue produce that I was looking for (I'm not sure there's a box of blueberries anywhere in the state of Alaska right now), but that didn't stop us from having some quintessential American treats and snacks. Like Oreos with pop rocks in them and Bomb Pops, for example. You know, the classics. And then after lunch, orange soda floats, because America means junk food.
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| Lego Abe Lincoln guarding the watermelon |
Once evening settled in and we ate a later dinner of burgers and baked beans, we packed up our boxes and boxes of fireworks and launched off down to the road to the "Flats" (Women's Bay) to start our own personal fireworks show.
Two things about Alaska. One: because it's light out until about 2am, there's never really a good time to shoot fireworks in the "dark". So we didn't leave the house until 10pm, when it's slightly almost getting darker (sunset is after 11). Two: there are no rules about fireworks, so we can buy as big and ridiculous explosives as we want.
We met friends down at the bay and started with the firecrackers and smoke bombs and things that don't matter if it's light or not. We also staked three PVC pipes into the sand to launch bottle rockets out of (so that the kids aren't holding them in their hands).
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| Grown up pop its. These things POW when you throw them |
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| The kids liked to take several smoke bombs and see what mix of colors he could make |
Then once it started to get kind of sort of almost darkER, we set up the giant fireworks and bottle rockets and put on a show.
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| Shooting off the good stuff at midnight. Still not dark. |
Overall it was a super fun night and a fantastic 4th of July, even if it was quieter than usual.
