The 4th of July, only a month late!

Ella is a pretty good traveler.  She is fine on long car trips, doesn't get super home sick, and it excited about almost everywhere we go (unless she is feeling sick, and then she immediately flips into the worst traveler since C3PO).  Her one request this summer was that even though we had tons of trips planned, could we please be home for the 4th of July.

I'm not a huge 4th of July fan.  I know lots of people for which it is the ultimate in holiday revelry, but I just can't get that excited.  Growing up in the desert means you don't get to do fireworks at your house and my parents weren't big on taking us to firework displays at the fairgrounds.  We did do them on the occasion we were in Utah, but really it has been a "ehh" (shoulder shrug) holiday for me.  All that background info translates to: I don't really understand her desire to be home for the 4th of July.

Since it worked out well we did indeed make it back for the 4th of July.  We even found out from the Bagleys that there was a big firework show put on by members of the other ward at the Gering Stadium, so never ones to miss a free event, we packed up the crew to stake out some seats.

A little before dusk the Bagleys arrived.  I don't know how they do it with 5 kids, but we were happy they would brave the noise and lateness of hour to share in the "adventure."

Carter has his lego guys.  You can ask Carter at any time or place if he has a lego guy on him and odds are 99.99999999999999999% he will have one in his pocket.

The first big BOOM...

They started getting bigger and louder and at first they were a little scary.... then they just kept...well..going.  It was an amazing show.  It was the first year they had sponsors, and after about 20 minutes all of the adults were looking at each other like "Wow, how much longer can they keep this up?" After 45 minutes I yelled to Eric "They had too many sponsors!!!!"  And finally after what seemed like 5 weeks of deaf inducing noise we were free to go home an collapse into our beds.

On the actual 4th of July we had the Bagleys over for BBQ and fireworks...in the day time!!! (because I was super tired from the trip and the night before and wanted everyone in bed at a reasonable hour.  Yes, party, I am your pooper.)

Eric thought it would be "fun" and "a good idea" to let the two 10 year old boys be in charge of lighting the fireworks.

All it took was them waving their punks haphazardly around and Ethan getting burned before we turned that job back over to Eric.

Someone parked in front of our house to go to a party up the street.  There was lots of room by the house they were going to, but I guess they didn't want their car messed up by any fireworks they were going to do...ha ha suckers.

Melissa was nice and brought glow necklaces for the kids, or in the younger kids' case glow eye wear, frame, and pirate patch (missing the patch).

It was fun to have friends over, and we did get done reasonably early, but unfortunately we forgot the college that is 2 blocks from our house does fireworks and they set them off in what sounded like our back yard.  The kids got to bed early, but we were up with the rattling windows and the poor whiny dog.