4th of july

this has always been my favorite holiday. summertime, history, patriotism, fireworks...

we went to the stowe house in the AM to see what was going on at their kids festival, but turned right around when we saw the entrance fee and detoured into the train museum instead, which was free. and sparrow did not even know the difference! she was extremely excited about the trains. as was i. i love learning about cool old stuff.


in the afternoon i was able to pick up some fire crackers and flags while out getting food for the potluck. the flags were made in the USA--thank God; it would have been just classic to give the chai-comms another profit from buying an american flag on independence day. sparrow was as happy as christmas when i brought the flags home. she sang and danced and waved them around (and still does.) she kept exclaiming, "i love my american flag!" i am sure she diesn't quite get the patriotism thing yet--does she even know what a country is? no. a few examples of her impression of the 4th of july. when i told her it was our country's birthday, she said, "are we gonna get the fourth day of july a birthday cake?" also, a few days before we had been in trader joe's and she had suddenly said, "ooh, is it a holiday?" i'd looked up and seen that she was pointing out a red/white/blue star wreath thing hanging up. "oh, it IS a holiday, sparrow, but it's not christmas. it's for the fourth of july." so on the actual fourth, when we woke up in the AM i said, "hooray, it's the 4th of july!" and sparrow said, "YAAAAAAAAY! I WANNA GO TO TRADER JOE'S!" somehow she must have thought it was a tj's thing? i dunno, i just laughed at the cuteness.

the potluck at alan and melissa's was really fun. we arrived in bonnets, cowboy hats, and all, waving flags and singing the star spangled banner. gotta cheese it up when you have kids. but seriously, over the years i had lost much of my kiddish patriotism, and i am happy to say it has recently all been coming back. i am SO thankful to live in this country and hope i can be as active as possible in protecting it and the CONSERVATIVE values that made this country so free and creative and amazing. yes, amazing. the values that indeed gave every whining liberal her liberty to whine.

we set off our firecrackers on the sidewalk and drove off to the nearest fireworks in goleta. our family ended up watching them from the albertsons parking lot, and sparrow, i am happy to say, was much more enthusiastic about them this year than last. last year we were at the daltons with a super good time, but sparrow kept saying that she didn't like the fireworks and making me really sad! the year before, when she was only one year old, we had watched far off ones from our balcony, but she had been so adorable and repeating "oo" "aa" with me. i can't believe this is her fourth fourth of july! at any rate, she was still hanging on to her flag and describing all the colors to me and saying happily, "i like it, i like it, i like it!" the albertsons parking lot lights were not ideal, but we didn't care. the moon was full behind the fireworks display and it was gorgeous. even golden said, or markedly tried to say "boom boom." she was pretty scared of them at first, but with sparrow's and my excitement, she soon caught on that it was fun! anyways, i am still SO mad that i lost the little video of sparrow watching the fireworks. i got home and loaded stuff onto the computer and forgot i have to do something special with the vid. files now on my new computer. so they didn't load, and i went thru and deleted all the stuff in my camera immediately! stooooo-pid. gone. .....oh well. gone is gone. it was a fabulous and memorable day; i'll just have to commit that scene to memory.

melissa helping sparrow with firecrackers

in the celebratory spirit