Day 997 - 4th of July Blow Out

Happy 4th of July! Our celebration was filled with noise, explosions, and exhaustion...because both Emma and Andrew are sick with a cold. The only explosions we saw tonight were green and yellow, and they came out of the kids' nose and ass.

It's unfortunate that the kids were sick for the three-day weekend because we were hoping we could do something more interesting with them than our usual trips to Target and Costco; this weekend, we could've gone to Bed, Bath & Beyond and Sam's Club. Instead, we just kept them home with their weekend friends, Kleenex and Whiskey.

We tried to make the day a little interesting for them by telling them how we could watch fireworks on television tonight. The kids seemed very excited about it, but anything on television is exciting. They would've been thrilled to CSPAN for three hours.

I knew PBS had a 4th of July celebration on television at 8pm, so I figured that would be the best program to watch. Lisa and I explained to Emma and Andrew how fun it was going to be to see fireworks on television with music. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long it was going to take for the fireworks to actually happen.

There was at least an hour of songs, speeches, and music before a single firework went off. All of these PBS people came on: Charlie Rose sang Seventy-Six Trombones, the guys from Antique Roadshow performed a scene from Our Town, and Tavis Smiley did an interpretive dance to You're a Grand Ole Flag.

The kids were getting grumpy because they were sick and it was getting late. But when we tried to put them to bed, they screamed and cried because we told them we were going to watch fireworks on television. Much like a lonely hermaphrodite, we screwed ourselves.

A little after 9pm, the fireworks started. We let it play for about five minutes, and then told them it was time to go to sleep. By this time, everyone was exhausted so there was little argument.

When I remember my childhood, many of my immediate memories are not of the big vacations or planned events, but rather the smaller more intimate times that were unplanned and spontaneous. So although we weren't able to take the kids out to see fireworks, we still hope they had a memorable night of spending time together and watching Tavis Smiley in a white leotard. If that isn't memorable, I don't know what is.