Fireworks, Drive-In Movies, and Happy Holidays
I was afraid that this weekend was going to be a bit of a wash, as I have no discretionary money and couldn’t splurge on lots of noisy, sparky fireworks for the kiddies. Most years, we’ve spent $50 or $100 on small-gauge firecrackers, pull-pops, snap-n-pops, bottle rockets, smoke bombs, and the like. We didn’t have that kind of money this year, but I told the boys that we could spend up to $20 — their birthday money from a distant relative. So that’s what we did. I bought four tanks, two boats, two mammoth smoke bombs, six boxes of “snakes,” and three plum blossoms. It wasn’t much, but it was our most favorite things.
The kids particularly love these little boats that you can float in the water after lighting the fuse. They putt out a few feet and then shoot off two little “airplanes” that fly up in the air and make a loud pop. They also like the little tanks that putt forward a few feet and then shoot off several large, bang-y sparks. My youngest loves the pellets that you set afire and watch them expand into long snakes of stiff ash. I like the “plum blossom,” which sits on the ground and sends out fountains of coloured sparks. I don’t like anything that spins or leaves the ground — an aversion borne of my having been attacked by such a “spinner” when I was about 12. I still have the scar where it got me.
We took our booty out to my Grandmother’s house, as she lives outside the city limits and has plenty of land on which we can safely detonate the sparking and flying things. Her neighborhood also has a pretty decent fireworks display every year, so we sat out and watched it. It was really good this year, but the music was ghastly. We had to listen to some tone-deaf toddler with a speech impediment “sing” America the Beautiful, followed by a string ensemble’s rendition of the national anthem that was so badly done that most of the audience didn’t even realize that it was the national anthem. Then it was half an hour of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. When the show was over and everyone was leaving, they played God Bless the USA. I mean, really, there’s plenty of patriotic stuff out there — well-done and professionally performed — that would have made the perfect background to the show. What was with the 1950s retrospective? But, as I said, the actual fireworks were great.
That was all on Saturday night. Yesterday, we went back out to Grandma’s and had a big family cookout, with grilled chicken, fresh tomato salsa and corn chips, stuffed celery, grilled asparagus, fresh strawberries, and coffee punch. Then we took Grandma’s pontoon boat out for a spin.
Our last big adventure was taking the kids to a drive-in movie last night. Mom and Dad and I piled our stuff into Dad’s van and we went to see Shrek 2 and Harry Potter 3. I think the kids really enjoyed it, though they were pretty sleepy by the end of it — the movies ended at 1 in the morning, so we didn’t get home to bed until almost 2. The youngest is a mass of mosquito bites this morning … even though we used bug repellant and mosquito coils. The rest of us got a few bites, but this kid looks like he has the pox!
In any case, we had a great holiday, after all, and, after a good nap this afternoon and an early bed-time tonight, we will probably all be well-refreshed and ready to tackle the week ahead.