Fourth of July

We had some friends over to celebrate the 4th this year - about 20 people were here (and some close friends were not able to come due to being sick, and they were missed dearly); there was some Rock Band, a little bit of Bananagrams, some video games, and a lot of running around outside and playing in the basement.


About an hour or two before dusk Muriel, Storm and Taipan helped me bring out the sparklers, smoke bombs and other goodies:


And right around dusk we decided to get things started. Yuta was again our master of ceremonies. We did a lot of smoke makers first, then some noise makers, and then sparklers:


When it got dark it was time to get down to business. My mom picked up some fireworks on her drive from Florida to Ohio. We had three boxes of them, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and they were pretty awesome. I took some video, but I don't have any pictures to share. They were louder than I expected, so I was a little nervous that one of our neighbors might not be too happy with us, but the only neighbors we saw were ones that wanted to come over and see them.

I do have pictures of the kids laying down while waiting to watch them:


And my main squeeze, in between lighting the fireworks: