Fourth of July

Yesterday was exactly midway through 2007. That is hard to believe--it seems that the older I get the more quickly time goes. Funny, really. When you are younger you can't wait for time to fly so you can be older and when you are older you have moments when you wish time would stop. It's that idea of being younger that made me have to post about Fourth of July today.

Let me start by saying that I was very fortunate to have grown up next to my grandparents on about eight acres of land. We had (have, really, since my husband and I got and acre and we are living there, too: my mom and dad, my grandpa and TJ and I all have houses on this land--it is very cool.) It was great to grow up next to your grandparents and it was great to have all that space to run around--especially when it came to the Fourth of July.

When I was little, Fourth of July was a huge deal. We would invite my other grandparents (Dad's side), my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, some of Mom and Dad's friends, and sometimes our friends and we would have wiffle ball, go swimming, have a huge cookout (usually with tomatoes right out of the garden) and, when the sun when down, we would have a fireworks show that lasted sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. My dad would spend hours planning the order (one year he even had musical accompaniment) and we would all take our lawn chairs and watch the show. We "ooh's" and "ahh'd" and got eaten by mosquitoes, but that was okay, because it was Fourth of July and it was expected. One year our crazy German Shepherd, Baron, took a Roman Candle out of the ground and ran across the yard with it. He shot flaming balls at all of us while singing off his whiskers. (He was fine...we were scared to death, but he was fine.)

But all those things aren't the best memories I have of the Fourth. See, we didn't just throw parties-for a few years, they had a theme. The two that stand out most vividly are the Hawaiian Fourth of July (where we all had to wear crazy flowered shirts and leis) and our hillbilly Fourth of July (yep, you guessed it: cowboy hats, bandannas, the works--and that year we even did a hay ride). Eventually my brother got old enough to help dad and it became a "passing of the torch" moment when he ran the show and Dad watched. Everyone always had a good time and we talked about it for weeks afterward. We started thinking about next year's Fourth on the fifth. We couldn't help it.

As I got older, the parties got smaller. Less people came, we stopped getting as many fireworks, and the themes vanished quickly. Our fireworks displays went from 4 hours to less than 30 minutes. When Eric joined the Navy, the fireworks pretty much stopped. Ironic, I know...my brother defends our independence and we stop celebrating it. It just didn't seem right to do it without him, somehow.

When Eric returned, we started again. Not anything huge like we used to, but fireworks. And food. Last year Mom, Dad, and Eric provided the fireworks and TJ and I provided the food. We set up tables in our garage, ate, talked, played cornhole. and then, as it got dark, Eric and his friend Nathan began the fireworks. Some of TJ's family came over and we all sat in our lawn chairs watching the show. We're doing the same thing this year (add ping-pong to the mix, though). Sure, we have to do it on the third because everyone has to work on the fifth, but we're still doing it. And it is getting bigger.

It's almost like old times...without the leis, cowboy hats, crazy dogs and hay rides.

What's your favorite Fourth of July memory?