July 5, 2007--Fireworks

We had a pretty good Fourth of July yesterday, but it could have been better. Erick had the day off, but they asked him if he could work anyway and he decided to take it. So our paycheck should be pretty good this week--he'll get overtime and holiday pay. Then after work he picked up materials for a job he's doing (enclosing a porch) so he didn't get back until 7:00pm. By that time I had been close to just trying to broil the hamburgers because I don't know how to use the grill. Then we went to watch the fireworks. There are three towns that do fireworks here, all about twenty minutes away, so we had options. He wanted to go to one town because it's easier to get out of afterwards (he hates getting stuck in after-firework traffic!) and I wanted to go to another because I knew my dad was going there. I won the argument, and so we headed there, but we never saw my dad the whole time anyway. Plus the wind was coming toward us from where they were setting off the fireworks, so not only did we get the full force of the smoke, but debris kept falling on us the entire time. Some of the embers were still glowing. I was starting to get worried that I was going to get by one--I did get hid on the forehead by a chunk of something, but thankfully it wasn't hot. At one point a huge spray of glowing embers fell right next to Timothy. Jay stamped it out before the grass caught on fire. About that time I had two children saying they needed to use the bathroom and another saying she needed a drink of water, plus a storm was building and we were starting to see flashes of lightning. The fireworks were not over, but I suggested we leave early. We left just in time--it started raining just as we arrived home. It would have been no fun being stuck in traffic during a storm with kids who needed to go to the bathroom. I still can't get over how many falling embers there were last night. I've never seen that much stuff fall out of the sky. It was nuts.