Sam's Blog

The day after the 4th...

...should be an official day off. After all, the 'thing' to do on the 4th is barbeque and celebrate...

Many of the residents in our cul de sac get together on the 4th for a summer party. Everyone barbeques some meat and brings a side dish or two. Some of the former residents (including the prior owners of our house) come by also. There were around 30-50 people partying. We had steak, ribs (2 kinds), chicken (several recipes), pork chops, hot dogs, hamburgers, hot links....salads, mac-n-cheese, fruit, etc. And...tons of desserts. Oh, yeah...and 2 blenders set up for margaritas... We set up the tables across the street...

And what Seattle 4th of July would be complete without...RAIN. Yep...right in the middle of dinner we had a good 10-minute downpour. Since we were the newbies, all the neighbors told us that the rain was typical for the 4th and it was our official welcoming...

After dinner, we chatted with the neighbors as Aly and Mitch ran around celebrating the fact that they got to stay up late. At around 9:00-ish the small fireworks started coming out. The kids enjoyed them but at 9:30, we took them in the house and put them to bed. Lisa has been sick for the past couple of days so she went right to bed too. I went back out for the festivities...

Washington doesn't have the same restrictions on fireworks that we had in California. And this group knew where to get the good ones. As soon as it got dark, the neighbors went full-on with the fireworks. I'm not exaggerating that this little block party show was more impressive than the typical fireworks show at Community Park in Davis. They had they typical sparkling, spinning, colorful ground fireworks. Roman candles, bottle rockets, ladyfingers, M80s (yep)... But it was the ones that Hartley (neighbor) and Ralston (former owner of our house) brought that stole the show. They looked like the ones that you'd see at a fireworks show....only you're right there underneath... I looked around and it appeared that others in the neighborhood were doing the same thing. Very cool. I was slightly worried because all the houses have cedar shake roofs and there are trees all around where we live...I guess the brief downpour was useful after all...

I snuck inside at about 11:00 as things were dying down... I could still hear fireworks going off for awhile after I hit the sack... I got up at 5:00 dead tired and with terrible heartburn...and I had a meeting with the Bobs at 3:30... Lisa woke up feeling terrible. She skipped her workout (now you know she was sick) and went back to sleep.

Today should have been a day off...

posted by Sam @ 8:56 PM