Yesterday might have been my favorite Independence Day ever. It started out fun enough: riding 12 miles while my Dad & Brendan ran 10. I had stopped to chat with my cousin Afton, and then wasn’t sure which direction they had gone (silly me, ought to have asked what route we were taking). So I went up the highway back towards my parents’ house a mile, and they weren’t that direction. Turns out they had gone into town towards the church, and I finally caught back up with them right after they turned around.

I got home at around 9, and Scooter got all excited again, because he saw I still had the ‘running shorts’ on, and I felt bad for leaving him before, so I ran a mile with him while Amanda got ready to go to the parade which started at 10. Made it home just in time to shower, and off we drove to the parade. It was nice and long, and while we got no candy (I’ve heard it’s not ‘cool’ for adults to scamper after candy), we did get free root beer and hot dogs afterwards.

Soon as we were done, I took Amanda home, and went over to the fireworks stand to help Pastor Curt for the rest of the day (until 10). I got around $175 worth of fireworks, and then won 4th prize, which was a couple of the smallish finale-type displays. After we closed up, we went to blow up our stuff along with the rest of the church folks. P.C. brought along a bunch of bigger displays and between all of us, we had a very nice show. The ‘Gone Fishing’ tipped over, and shot at my wife and mom. A bunch of us got hit by smaller pieces, but I found out later, that it had hit them with a couple shots. Had a blast lighting everything off, and even more fun watching it all.

All in all, a pretty fantastic day, even with a few mishaps along the way.