July Rocks, Reason 4: Independence Day

I've already written here that July 4th is my favorite holiday - it beats Christmas hands down, and comes really close to beating my birthday, too. I wanted you all to be able to see why I love it so much, so I brought my camera with me today. Aren't you lucky?

I live in an area where we have the very classic small town 4th of July. The festivities start in the morning, when we go to the town green and walk around all of the vendor booths that are set up, offering everything from fruit and vegetables to silver jewelry. And, of course, pies.

Somehow I always end up being broke on the 4th, so I can never afford to buy anything. Which is sad, but somehow I survive. :) As you're walking around the green, you are surrounded by all of the people who live in the area, almost all of whom come out to enjoy the day. You'll see lots of red, white and blue clothing, flags on shirts and shoes and vests, and lots of kids and even quite a few dogs. And to set the mood, there is a jazz band playing in the middle of the green.

You'll see people selling balloons, and if you have a child with you (which we did), you'll of course have to buy one. We bought this one below - we didn't know at the time that it was an evil balloon. First it kept hitting us in the faces, and then it popped right next to my little great niece's head and scared the wits out of her. Bad balloon.

Then the parade will finally start to come through, and you'll see lots of fire trucks and ambulances, some old tractors, some people on horseback (and if you're lucky, like we were, one of those horses will poop right in front of you. Cool!) and a few bands. The bands, of course, are the best part of the parade, and it ended this time with a very cool one. Three of the schools in the area joined their bands together to form one large band with (from what I heard) 300 members. It was very impressive.

(I was going to include more pictures here, but blogger decided to crap out on the picture uploading, so that's all I can include. Go a few posts below to find my flickr link - you'll find some more pictures there.)

After the parade, if you're lucky enough to be in a family like I am, you'll go back to the house and hang out for a while. At my sister's house, my nephew was waiting at the house to bombard us with water balloons, a fight that ended with him tossing his girlfriend and himself into the kiddy pool in the backyard. Silly kids (well, he's almost 19, but still). You'll talk and have fun and then there will be a barbecue, with hamburgers, hot dogs, marinated chicken, macaroni salad, fruit salad and of course chips.

If you're me, once the barbecue is over you have to go home to let the dogs out and spend some time with them, which is exactly what I did. Then when evening came, I headed back to my sister's house and had a still warm from the oven brownie (yum), hung out for another hour or so, and then we headed back to town to watch the fireworks. If you're like my sister and I, you'll sit in lawn chairs on the grass and talk (and read a little, in my case), and watch the people slowly pile in while the kids play on the grass. Then, at about 9:30, the fireworks start. In the town we go to, they set off the fireworks over the local college, and they're really very nice. I took video of the finale - if I can figure out how to upload that here, or on flickr, I'll let you see it.

And then they're over, and you go home, and you sit up and post entries about the great day on the Internet for the world to read, even though you should be getting to bed because you have to get up and go to work in the morning (and I have to be at work at 7:00, so I really need to hit the hay - it's 11:02 right now. Eek!) And there you have the perfect small town 4th of July.

And in two weeks? Birthday! July really does rock.