Happy 4th of JULY!

I love the 4th of July. I love the parade. I love the fireworks. I love the food. I love the reason for celebrating. One of the things that I've loved about living in a smaller town, is the parade and the fact that it starts only a half a block from our house. We go over early in the morning and stake out a spot. Then about a half hour before the parade we go over and sit and visit with all our neighbors and friends as they walk by going to their spots. We love watching the runners sprint by, cheering for the ones we know and clapping for those we don't. I love hearing the band start playing, a sure signal that the parade will be starting soon. I love standing up as we watch the flag come around the corner. I always get a little tear of gratitude as I watch the stars and stripes go by. I'm so proud of all those people who stand with their hands over their hearts. It makes me sad for the ones who don't. I love watching all those military boys who follow the flags. Grateful to them and to their families who give so much. I love when the B-52's fly noisily overhead. The sound pounding through your body. The way everyone cheers for them. I love the band and the way your toes start tapping. Yep. A pretty good day.

If you recall the post about the black creature that lives with us. And is pretty good until we leave. Well he hates the leaving part really bad on the 4th. We have tried chaining him, locking him up, anything else you can think of doing to a 50 lb. monster to get him to stay where you want him. He's broken through numerous steel cables. Scaled fences. Climbed under fences. And for all we know, transported himself to the other side of the fence. We finally have just started taking him to the parade with us. The final straw was the year Steven had to get up and start chasing him down the parade route (with the parade still going on in full swing) and drag him back by his collar, cuz we didn't have a leash with us. He even got 'candy' today. The local pet store was throwing out sample size bags of dog food.

The kids of course love the parade. They love sitting at the start of the parade where everyone is so excited to be finally starting. Where no one is hot and tired and worn out. Where everyone has an absolute stocked supply of candy. Oh yeah! We get more candy at the parade than we've ever gotten trick-or-treating. I always find it humorous that we encourage our kids to run out in the road with moving vehicles to take candy from strangers. -Ok, kids today is opposite day. Please play in the road, with cars and semi's driving by and please load up with as much candy as you possibly can from complete strangers!- The only downside is a that a vast majority of the candy thrown is salt water taffy. Now I like the occasional piece of salt water taffy, especially now with all the gourmet flavors available. But seriously folks, you can only take so much. And it's not like you can put it away and save it for another day. The stuff is rock hard in a matter of days. I hate driving by the parade route after and all the litter and trash that people leave. So I made the kids pick up all the candy, even if they didn't want it so at least our section would be as clean when we left as when we got there. When we got home, I felt bad throwing out 10 + pounds of taffy, so here's what we came up with:

Salt water taffy sculpting. It doesn't hold it's form very good. But hey since it was opposite day -hey kids, let's play with our food, too!-. Now the only question is, who's cleaning up that mess????




I'm proud to be an American. God, please, bless the USA! Enjoy your holiday weekend!