A belated happy independence day to all of my people from the U.S. We celebrate each year (except for last year!) in our small village with a parade and fireworks. Not to brag, but we have the best small-town parade around! It’s so very American! We have fire trucks (with sprayers to wet down the hot crowd,) ambulances, police, as well as many floats, politicians, bands, and of course horses and tractors (we are talking small town here!)
This year was a little different, as the fourth landed on a Sunday. I, as choir director at our little church, needed to be at 9:30 a.m. Mass directing said choir. I left shortly thereafter, to drop off children #’s 3 and 4 to secure a spot along the parade route. The parade started at 11 a.m., so it was a tight squeeze. I dropped off said children and headed home with child #2 to let the doggies out. After that was accomplished we packed up a cooler bag with an icepack and six water bottles and headed out. This accomplishes two things: 1. We have lovely cold water on a terribly hot day, and 2. we have a cool place in which to place melty candy and freeze pops that are thrown at the parade. We don’t live very far from the parade route, so we just walked to avoid all of the traffic/parking that we passed on our way uptown. We found the twins and our spot and settled in.
It was a lovely, old-fashioned parade, as you can see from the pictures. Child #2 is still a little bitter about the bike-decorating contest that she took part in a few years back. The rules stated that the child had to decorate their bike. However, the child that won stated that her mother had stayed up all night doing her bike. Child #2 was incensed, which I can see her point. However, life, as we all know, is not fair. This is not Heaven. It’s earth.
After the parade we went home and relaxed. It was quite hot, especially with certain members of the family running after the candy that was thrown! They even had some chocolate this year (a rarity, as it is July and it’s usually pretty hot – 94° this year!) We cooled down, ate a lovely grilled dinner, and then started preparations for traveling across town to the park for fireworks.
Child #3 did not want to attend, as the loud noises from the fireworks trigger her PTSD. Unfortunately, child #4 had a migraine and an upset tummy, so she also stayed home. Child #2 and I traversed across town to the park and set up my chair and her blanket. We read and chatted until it was dark and the show began. It was, as usual, spectacular.
We made it home with a minimum of fuss, thanks to our yearly preparations and our flashlight! My broken leg hurt some (it’s a fair walk) and my muscles were cramping by the time we arrived home, but a little ibuprofen and a good night’s sleep cured that. All in all a good fourth! Hope yours was awesome too! Also, if you don’t live in the U.S., and therefore don’t celebrate the fourth of July, I hope you had a lovely weekend.
I’m also quite thankful that our home firework people ceased the show before midnight so that Delilah and I could get a good night sleep. The night of the third they were going wild setting off family fireworks and we did not sleep well. Mainly because Delilah (all 5.6 pounds of her) was in attack mode at the incessant noise and I was the only one there to calm her! My dog detests fireworks! They are beautiful when the village does them, though.
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