the fourth

i love love love the fourth of July. I love it because it means that all of the following will likely occur:

1. breakfast at the park. pancakes, sausage and eggs served by cute old members of the Riverdale Lion's club.my cute fam at the park. Russ wasn't allowed to be in the picture because he apparently didn't get the memo that the myers family celebrates holidays the right way - by wearing the correct colors. Non festive color wearers are shunned. (My sister almost had a stroke when her husband told her he was wearing black). we gave russ a break this year since he's not technically part of the family yet.

2. world's best parade. it consists mostly of local jr. high and high school students riding on expensive trucks shooting water guns at people.

my adorable little nephew, Carter, who must be going through a grumpy phase because i refuse to believe that he doesn't like being held by me.

During the parade we sat up on a hill for an ideal view of the parade. this was not, however, the ideal location to catch candy as it was thrown by the hundreds into the crowd. a parade isn't a parade without catching and eating some salt water taffy so, after about 15 minutes of me whining in my best and cutest whiny voice Russ made the trek down the hill to join the 7-year olds in their candy-catching endeavors and brought me back 2 tootsie rolls :( He redeemed himself and saved the day by catching a frisbee which we then traded for 3 taffys with the little girl next to us.

3. Carnival at the park. we make our rounds by the booths and possibly buy a snow cone, nothing more.
4. Pool party/BBQ at my house. Fourth of July would never be the same without stuffing mysef silly with hamburgers and all manner of junky goodness. (then swimming off all of the calories)



5. FIREWORKS! doesn't matter where, but the bigger the better. This year happened to be the best year ever for fireworks. and i'm just glad i'm still alive to tell about it. We started things of by doing sparklers with Russ's nephew Ryan.


Then Russ's older brother and a whole slew of neighborhood friends showed up with approx $800 worth of illegal fireworks from Wyoming. The show was pretty sweet until someone had the bright idea to let 14 year olds light fireworks. Apparently they didn't understand that the firework had to go straight up into the air rather than toward houses and people (which they did). One firework (the big ones you see at REAL firework shows) decided to go up in the air and then come back down and explode in the middle of the street. We had quite the scare when one of the last ones, not even lit by a minor, darted through the neighbor's tree, bounced off their driveway and exploded on our front porch (which I was conveniently sitting in front of). Not wanting to sport burn marks on my wedding day i promptly exited the firework show.

YAY for america!