Fourth Of July: The End

After the last post we all headed home and showered and changed clothes (again) and then had some lunch. The shower was in case we came into contact with poison oak or poison ivy during the hike. The changing clothes was simply because the kids had gotten dirty. At this point though we ran out out of red, white and blue themed clothes for Catherine so she ended up in a white dress. We played some Mario Party while we waited for Ginger's cake to bake, then we finished off the day by heading over the Barry's place for some playing, dinner and (unbeknownst to us) some fireworks.




After the last couple of posts, I'm not sure I can stay up much later typing all this out. Suffice to say that Barry did not lose a hand and put on a great show for all of us. The one bad thing was that with it just having rained, it was a bit muggy out, so the fireworks generated a lot of smoke. And I mean a lot. You could practically get lost in it a couple of times. One thing I found highly amusing was how we had everyone moving around to avoid the smoke, then the wind would shift and suddenly the smoke was heading right to the new spot where everyone was.




Since I didn't know there would be fireworks, I didn't know to bring my tripod, so the fireworks shots are probably less impressive than they could have been. The were better in person obviously. Of course, with the laws around here, it's not like you can have any of the really fancy 'shoot up into the air' fireworks anyway. Heck, I don't even think bottle rockets are allowed anymore.






Some shots of everyone watching as the fireworks are set off. The kids are still a bit put off by the loud noises except for Jacob, who evidently isn't affected in the slightest by loud noises. Also, look at the size of Barry's boys. Reuben is just about as tall as Quinn (if not taller), and he's two years younger. I'm not saying those boys are mutant freaks or anything, but man either they're tall for their age or Quinn is short for his. Hmmm, maybe it's a side effect of Quinn not eating any fruits or vegetables.




Did I mention that they generated a lot of smoke?




And a big thanks to Barry for getting sparklers for the kids. I had never been allowed to let the kids use sparklers in past because we were worried about the kids burning themselves. But they did a great job of keeping them away from their bodies. Catherine was Ms Fearless and was one of the first to want to hold one. Quinn on the other hand had to watch everyone else get to handle one before he decided he wanted to give it a shot. You can see from the photo that even after he got it, he was still a bit timid. I will point out that was a photo at the start of his first one, after that he got much more nonchalant about them.

All in all a really long day. I think I ended up taking close to 400 pictures once all was said and done (and even though it feels like it, no, I didn't include them all here in the posts). Hope everyone else out there had an entertaining Fourth.