4th of july

So I'm a little behind with the posts....but I'm sure the cyber-world will forgive me.

I just wanted to take a moment to jot down our fun-filled 4th of July holiday with the family.
My sister came up on Friday night for the weekend and my mom & step-dad came up on Saturday as well. Good thing we've got a house and beds for everyone (and central air).

We were all up bright and early Saturday morning to go to a local parade at 8:30AM. This is supposedly Grand Rapids' longest running Independance day parade at 76 years. Brian and I got drafted into the neighborhood volunteer marching band. Woeee...It was fun to carry a marching bass drum again, but I sure was glad it was the tiny baby bass, and not the jumbo 40-pounder big bass drum. Brian did pretty good on the trombone, but had to admit his lips were fairly shot after so many years without much practice. Lucky for him, there were only 2 pieces and we marched a good deal between the songs. As usual, the drum section (myself and the snare drum player) tried our chops for the entire length of the route. On the upside, with no other drummers, we could play whatever we damn well felt like it as the cadance... as long as the beat was steady. Cool.

This was Tam's first parade :-) Shelly was a trooper by getting up so early and watching Tam, even though she complained that most "normal" parades start at 10am! (I was glad it was early and not so hot yet.) She said Tam loved watching the antique cars and politician cars go by. He also like getting the free candy hand-outs.

Later on Saturday, we got out the kiddie wadding pool and my folks brought a new sand-box to play in. Oh, boy, Tam's such a lucky boy! And the wadding pool was good for grown-up feet too :-) It was really nice to just sit outside, relax, and talk with the family.

The highlight of Sunday morning was church service with our new pastor. He's British, with a pretty thick accent still, even though he's been in the states 10 years. He joked that it was a great sense of irony that we hired the British guy to preach on Independence day. He followed this thought with a story about the idiots in our home town. He said at the hair salon, his hair cutter person asked if he celebrated the 4th of July in England. . Luckily he countered saying that no, they don't...but they celebrate Thanksgiving Day as the day they finally got rid of all those pesky pilgrams! I know that throughout the sermon, I just kept waiting for him to say "And now for something completely different..." (Monty Python's Flying Circus). Sheesh.

We didn't get to down-town to see any official fireworks on Sunday night (July 4th). It would have been way past Tam's bedtime and I think it would have freaked him out quite a bit. However, our hick neighbors on the next street oer provided a show until 3:00AM. Sheesh. On our street, our immediate neighbors came out for an impromptu street party between 10-11, complete with adult beverages and bug spray. We all stood around chatting, drinking, and saying "oooh & ahhh" at the appropriate moments. Luckily, Tam did sleep through EVERYTHING. I'll take it as a sign that next year we'll try to get out and see a real show.