Wednesday, July 4, 2018

A Glorious 4th

Why is it we call it the 4th of July, but we don't do the same for 25th of December or 14th of February?

Just more random thoughts that occur to me today while we were resting together.  Ahh, Freedom!  Freedom to sit around and watch a parade, or be in it, or have a cookout, or just stay home and appreciate all our Blessings.  And we have Many. 

We started our holiday participating in the Brownsburg Community Independence Day Parade, which as it turns out, is the 2nd largest local Parade in the state, 2nd only to the Indy 500 Parade!


We got Spirit, yes we do!  


OK, this is the 1 picture I did not take today.  This is the Boy Scouts from Troop 396 that led the Parade, holding the starting banners.  Note the nutty one up front with the wild hair and goofy glasses.  Yep, that one is mine. 


Meanwhile, the Cub Scouts from Pack 396 all wore their Camp shirts so they could ride in the Parade.  


Sam and Jacob sitting in the truck, ready to ride! 


The big kids walked it and the littles rode.   My kids both rode.  I had fully planned to walk it, but at the last minute they needed an adult in the truck back with the littles, so I hopped up.  Eric had parked the car and hadn't caught up with us yet, we caught him just as we were turning from Williams Park setup to the street to just starting, and he hopped up with me.  


The Littles in our truck waving their flags! 
There was a trailor behind us with hay blocks that the other kids sat on, and a couple coolers. 
As we got moving, they started passing out popsicles.  I had no clue we'd be handing those out.  
No doubt we'd run out!  We ran out of popsicles just after crossing 267. 
But right before we'd run out of our own, we got stuck at the light, and some citizen came up and handed us handfuls of popsicles for all the kids... and a couple grownups.  It was hot out, but this was the most fun I'd ever had doing a Brownsburg Parade!


As the Parade progressed, Jacob wanted to snuggle. 
Only the Best Daddy in the World would hug this hotbox on the hottest most humid day in IN.

  After we got home, we recovered. 
We got home and showered, as cool as our bodies would tolerate, and Jacob made us all put on our Mickey flag shirts.  


Eric cooked out, brats and hot dogs for lunch, which were Awesome, as usual.  We ate with some Grippos chips we'd gotten from down South, and after which we still all were tired, so we sat and chilled out watching 1776.  This is my Favorite 4th of July Musical. 

We paused for naps, and dinner, and Kumon, and stopped just in time to go outside as the sun set.


All three boys discovered and worked the beauty of Pop-its!
They dropped in unison.  
It did my heart good. 


They love stepping on them too.  


They ran through a good few boxes of Popits, each.  
Then we broke out the big guns. 

 We had been telling tales of last year when Chris discovered 'sparkulars'. 
I think it moved them to curiousity. 


Then we offered a sparkler to Jacob.  
You'd have thought we offered him $1000. 
His jaw dropped in shock. 

And he took the Sparkler!


He didn't do much, just watched it burn down.  Fascinating.


 Chris felt like he was the old pro with them, since he'd begun last year. 
But he was very cautious.  Comfortingly so. 


This was mine.  
I was playing around with my camera, trying to get some 'action shots'. 
This one turned out fun!

We asked Sam if he wanted to try a Sparkler this year too. 


I think he overcame his fear by giving them a try this year.  
He just held on and didn't move. 
He was the last holdout.  
And he Loved them! 



Next thing we knew, they were lighting them off of each other. 
Getting braver with each sparkler.  
I was so proud of them!


Trying to capture my happy Patriotic jamberry nail wraps.  
I used Kaboom and Born to Sparkle, with a blue polish I had covered in the holographic Independence. It's one of the happiest combos I've done in a while. 


More Sparkler Action!


And Drop another round of Poppers!


Jacob started getting a little more feisty with his Sparklers. 
See?  He makes more faces than just angry. 


He started to spin, but he zapped his finger.  
We had to tone him down.  
Still, he was happy.  

Then the kids let me challenge them while I played with my camera!


S for Sam. 


C for Christopher.


J for Jacob. 


E for Eric.
The kids felt the need that Daddy and I get in on the action too.  
 


C for Cathy. 
Christopher took this for me!
What can I say?  The kid has a good eye. 


With the last round of letter sparklers, they went crazy.  

Then we went in to try to find some fireworks on tv. 
We've got too many trees around here to see much other than the occasional high spark. 



We watched the Macy's day Finale, to which Chris felt the needed to dance. 
We caught part of Capitol 4th, with them playing some John Williams.  That thrilled all the boys. 
We tried to watch the Indy ones, but the news was just showing snippets, and all the fireworks were interfering with our reception of live tv.  Youtube worked best as it turned out.  From youtube we caught Disney's 4th Celebration from last year.  They liked that, and then NYC was the perfect note to end on.  I love a good fireworks finale.  
Meanwhile, we decided to go to a baseball game later this month and catch some live fireworks there.  We'll let the party continue all month long. Hope you all have had a Glorious 4th too. 

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