4th of July

Our 4th was definitely memorable. It started with mom finding out she had a flat tire, which of course can't be fixed until Monday. We picked up fireworks while Dad made the traditional homemade peach ice cream. Then the kids, mom and I made Grandma's birthday cake since we celebrate her birthday on the 4th. There must have been some grease left in the broiler from the steak we cooked the other day because the broiler caught on fire and blackened the cake and smoked us out of the kitchen. Luckily the oven was not ruined, only the cake. So Mom and I ran out to the store to buy new cake mix and started over (this time at mom's house). After we made the cake and were decorating it, we put the 94 candles on and the 9 was broken so we had to lay them down on the cake instead. Then the rain came. We ended up eating inside because even though it finally stopped by six, we weren't sure for how long and everything was really wet. After dinner, we took the kids outside to set off the before dark stuff like smoke bombs and snakes and we had bought a bunch of silly string and had a silly string war. The big kids (Dad, Scott, and Chris) really had fun with that and Brandon has requested more silly string for his birthday. Jessie preferred to watch from the sidelines. We went back inside for cake and ice cream and presents so that Grandma could leave whenever she was ready to, and about the time we were ready to go back outside and finish the fireworks, it was raining really hard again. We had also bought some glow sticks to play with outside, and we ended up playing with those inside with the lights out. That passed the time for awhile. Around 9:30 it had died down a little bit and Chris said he had a rain poncho and would light the fireworks so we put up the patio awning and everyone sat under that to stay dry and Chris lit fireworks. Jessie was so tired by then, because of course neither one took naps, she fell asleep on Mom's lap shortly after they started. Brandon managed to stay awake until they were done but he was zoning pretty hard by the end. Because the air was heavy with all the humidity, all the smoke stayed low instead of rising up like usual and a few times you could hardly see the fountains and all the illegal fireworks the neighbors put off (that you are not supposed to) were staying low to the ground. (We of course were good and didn't have any illegals.) It is a good thing that everything was wet because there probably would have been fires otherwise. The rain held off until we got everything finished and back inside, and then it started up again shortly after everyone went home. Grandma says that even though it wasn't necessarily the greatest 4th, it will be one of the most memorable and we will look back on it one day and remember the 4th of July when we almost burnt the house down, ruined the cake, and it rained almost the whole time. And we will probably all laugh.