The Fourth of July, this time with fireworks
The weather held out yesterday, so Laura and her family came over last night around 7. Laura and her husband talked with my parents, while Munchkin and I played games. I have washer toss and bean bag toss from my camp days, so I pulled those out; Munchkin quickly invented her own game with the bean bags. I think I started it, actually, by putting a couple of bean bags on her head. This led to the piling of bean bags, one by one, atop the other's head while attempting to balance them while walking the circuit from the kitchen to the living room to the dining room. We both got to five. Very impressive. Somewhat related: I'd also had sidewalk chalk that I'd brought to camp but haven't touched since, so I was able to give that to the family. Hooray. It deserves to go to a good home. Also, Munchkin made us Rainbow Loom bracelets. They are pink and purple.
Mom wasn't up to walking there, especially since she'd have to carry her chair, so she got a ride from dad while the rest of us got a head start. She would at least walk back with us since dad didn't want to deal with the traffic. We'd gotten only a couple houses down the next block when I realized I'd left the package of glow necklaces my dad had bought at home. We hadn't even left the subdivision yet when my parents drove past us; mom handed me the package out the window, heh. On our walk, Munchkin kept asking if every car that passed was my dad's. He drives a black SUV. No, that's not it; no, that's not it; that's a minivan; that's a white car. Just as we were getting to Wilson by the high school, a car that looked like my dad's was turning onto Western...and guess what, that really is my dad, and my mother is not in the car. The drop-off had been made. She'd asked for a meeting spot and I said the corner by the church across Main from the high school, and there she was. That worked out pretty well.
What didn't quite work out was our location. We found a spot fairly close to Main Street where there was a gap in the parkway trees along Millview, figuring we could look through the gap once the fireworks went off. Well...good news, the fireworks did in fact go off this year. Bad news, for the first half of the first song, the fireworks were all low, so the trees obscured them. One guy nearby said, we've got a great view of the water tower. I don't know if it was the same guy mom got to listen to for most of the show who would not stop talking but the people in our area were kind of disappointed. We also didn't have a speaker nearby so it was hard to hear the music--a bummer when this is supposedly a sky concert, where the fireworks are choreographed to match the songs. Mom really couldn't hear anything and was asking me to sing the songs for her. It sounds like dad could actually hear them better at our house, though there were speakers set up facing north along the high school athletic fields. We might end up sitting there next year to see how that fares, especially since that was the original configuration back in the day. Once the high school underwent its most recent reconstruction project, the fireworks turned 90 degrees and now face the park to the east, but the street between the park and the church has the aforementioned parkway trees and it's not ideal.
The good news is that we had working glowsticks this year. Laura's husband had brought some glowsticks on necklaces for them to wear; I had dad's necklaces that he got from the dollar store; and, thinking we might go to last year's redo, I'd picked up some fiber optic wands from Target last July. Those were actually super cool. There were switches to turn them on and off, and while the packaging suggested they'd only be the color of the handles, they changed color constantly. Munchkin kept dancing around with them and had a blast. My mom also took her to the concessions where they each got an ice cream bar, because my mom has the palate of an 8-year-old, heh. The 40-somethings were tired and content to just sit there.
The walk back was also pretty uneventful, though I did have to contend with 8-year-old logic. If you're an adult, you have to own the place where you live. Otherwise, you don't live there. Renting apparently is not a thing. And because the house I live in is my parents' house, I don't live here, even though my car payment gets sent here and I pay some of the bills and I do some of the chores and all my stuff is here. And, technically, since the mortgage isn't paid off yet, my parents don't actually own their house outright, so now *they* don't live here either. I suppose that means I'm squatting? Also, there's something about my being an adult and living with my parents that also is a thing. I went, okay, so you live with your parents and it's not your house, so you must not live in your house? She countered with, but I'm a kid! ...Got me there! It was quite the amusing conversation that took up much of the walk home. Laura and I both said that we knew people who were my age or even older who lived with a parent, but that apparently didn't count since they only lived with *one* parent, not two. Not sure why. I'm going to have to revisit this conversation with her in a few years to see if and how her perspective has changed. But it was a good time and I'm really glad everything happened as it should have. And, even better, my father got Laura and her husband to try his limoncello, just a little shot. It's like adult lemonade. Sounded like they gave it the thumbs-up.
Mom wasn't up to walking there, especially since she'd have to carry her chair, so she got a ride from dad while the rest of us got a head start. She would at least walk back with us since dad didn't want to deal with the traffic. We'd gotten only a couple houses down the next block when I realized I'd left the package of glow necklaces my dad had bought at home. We hadn't even left the subdivision yet when my parents drove past us; mom handed me the package out the window, heh. On our walk, Munchkin kept asking if every car that passed was my dad's. He drives a black SUV. No, that's not it; no, that's not it; that's a minivan; that's a white car. Just as we were getting to Wilson by the high school, a car that looked like my dad's was turning onto Western...and guess what, that really is my dad, and my mother is not in the car. The drop-off had been made. She'd asked for a meeting spot and I said the corner by the church across Main from the high school, and there she was. That worked out pretty well.
What didn't quite work out was our location. We found a spot fairly close to Main Street where there was a gap in the parkway trees along Millview, figuring we could look through the gap once the fireworks went off. Well...good news, the fireworks did in fact go off this year. Bad news, for the first half of the first song, the fireworks were all low, so the trees obscured them. One guy nearby said, we've got a great view of the water tower. I don't know if it was the same guy mom got to listen to for most of the show who would not stop talking but the people in our area were kind of disappointed. We also didn't have a speaker nearby so it was hard to hear the music--a bummer when this is supposedly a sky concert, where the fireworks are choreographed to match the songs. Mom really couldn't hear anything and was asking me to sing the songs for her. It sounds like dad could actually hear them better at our house, though there were speakers set up facing north along the high school athletic fields. We might end up sitting there next year to see how that fares, especially since that was the original configuration back in the day. Once the high school underwent its most recent reconstruction project, the fireworks turned 90 degrees and now face the park to the east, but the street between the park and the church has the aforementioned parkway trees and it's not ideal.
The good news is that we had working glowsticks this year. Laura's husband had brought some glowsticks on necklaces for them to wear; I had dad's necklaces that he got from the dollar store; and, thinking we might go to last year's redo, I'd picked up some fiber optic wands from Target last July. Those were actually super cool. There were switches to turn them on and off, and while the packaging suggested they'd only be the color of the handles, they changed color constantly. Munchkin kept dancing around with them and had a blast. My mom also took her to the concessions where they each got an ice cream bar, because my mom has the palate of an 8-year-old, heh. The 40-somethings were tired and content to just sit there.
The walk back was also pretty uneventful, though I did have to contend with 8-year-old logic. If you're an adult, you have to own the place where you live. Otherwise, you don't live there. Renting apparently is not a thing. And because the house I live in is my parents' house, I don't live here, even though my car payment gets sent here and I pay some of the bills and I do some of the chores and all my stuff is here. And, technically, since the mortgage isn't paid off yet, my parents don't actually own their house outright, so now *they* don't live here either. I suppose that means I'm squatting? Also, there's something about my being an adult and living with my parents that also is a thing. I went, okay, so you live with your parents and it's not your house, so you must not live in your house? She countered with, but I'm a kid! ...Got me there! It was quite the amusing conversation that took up much of the walk home. Laura and I both said that we knew people who were my age or even older who lived with a parent, but that apparently didn't count since they only lived with *one* parent, not two. Not sure why. I'm going to have to revisit this conversation with her in a few years to see if and how her perspective has changed. But it was a good time and I'm really glad everything happened as it should have. And, even better, my father got Laura and her husband to try his limoncello, just a little shot. It's like adult lemonade. Sounded like they gave it the thumbs-up.