Fire In the Sky and Night Swimming
Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 4:04PM We celebrated the Fourth of July with family here at the beach all day. The kids were looking forward to the evening activities, and getting ready for a late-night performance (the girls), the fireworks (everyone), the night swim (all the kids), and special popsicles (again, the kids) from breakfast on.
We had a great dinner which Wendy and I worked to prepare beginning last night (it happened to be a convoluted and time-consuming meal, but was delicious in the end). Mike's mom put a wonderful salad together and we had bread sticks, to boot. The party seemed official, however, once we served the cake.
At first Eliana was excited about cake, but then her tongue got a tiny taste of whipped cream and she set her bite back on her plate..."Like it," she said with a scrunched up nose. In this case that translated to,"I don't like it." The problem was the cake had zero chocolate in it. It turns out she is picky about her cake like she is picky about her pizza; not all cake is cake.
Not everyone shared Eliana's opinion regarding the cake...particularly her cousin J.
He had no problem eating his whipped cream, blueberry, strawberry-topped lemon pound cake right up; forks are highly overrated. We thought the kids needed a little more sugar since they only had cake after dinner, so we served them homemade popsicles. They were pretty cute-Wendy saw this idea in a magazine.
It finally got dark enough for the sparklers...Uncle Bobby passed them out.
Then we let the kids try to light one another on fire...
Noooo...they did just fine! They took their sparklers down on the beach and thought it was very cool to watch the...well, sparkle.
Next came the fireworks; they were set off by regular folks up and down the beach, but it was still quite a show. The kids loved it. I have to admit, it's fun for me, too.
Sometimes they sat to watch...
The dads lit up a couple of low-to-the-ground fireworks...
And the kids admired the dads' fireworking skills...
Getting pictures of fireworks is tricky! My favorites were the ones that exploded into a hundred smaller bursts of snowflake-like light that made one giant circle in the sky...but I never got a picture of that. This was close...
The colorful ones were also pretty.
The real show was the girls' rendition of Miss Mary Mack. Their adoring fans awaited the performance anxiously. In their matching Fourth of July t-shirts they stood on the beach in front of everyone and clapped out the rhyme, getting louder and louder until the end: "They (the elephants) jumped so high, high, high, They touched the sky, sky, sky, And they never came back, back, back, Till the FOURTH OF JULY, -LY, -LY!"
The finale for the evening was a night swim; they swam in the moonlight, and the bright bursts from the fireworks, and the soft glow from the lights in the pool.
Just before 10 o'clock we got the kids out of the pool and had them get ready for bed, late-night style...
They were pretty lit up (pun totally intended) for a while, but once they got in bed they went right to sleep. We got everything cleaned up and ended our day by watching a movie we would describe as thoroughly depressing...excellent acting, but oh-so-sad story. That was too bad, but the rest of the day was filled with fun and togetherness and great memories.
I hope your day was, too! I am amazed and humbled that I live in this country, and I hope that I never take that for granted.
Reader Comments (2)
I want Eliana's piece!
Hi, Can i take a one small pic from your site?