Independence Day

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

-John Adams

I like this quote from John Adams because we sometimes make fun of the tradition of fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July, but as you can see, it was specifically mentioned by one of our Founding Fathers that we should celebrate with fireworks, or "illuminations", among other things.  Of course, it wasn't the 2nd of July we celebrated, the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted on the 4th.

While we didn't do everything on John Adams' list of things to do to celebrate, we did do a few.  We went to a park for lunch with Jaaromy's family.  Coincidentally, it's the park that the boys and I have been going to while Nathaniel is at Music Camp.

  After lunch, we celebrated with sports, as recommended by John Adams.

The boys weren't interested in giving it a try, but Jaaromy did.

Even Grandpa Zierse gave it a try.

I mentioned that this pine tree looked like a good climbing tree, so the boys decided that they should climb it.  With a little help from Dad, they got up there.

So did some of the cousins.  Jonathan actually got pretty high.  Nathaniel decided he was done pretty quick.

Jaaromy helped Brigham climb a little.  He seemed a little nervous.

He did like being up high though.

It was a fun picnic.  After that we went to Best Buy so we could pick up my birthday present.  Jaaromy got me a new camera.  It's a pretty nice one too.  My birthday wasn't for another month but we wanted to give Nathaniel my old camera and his birthday was coming up.  We had fun trying it out all afternoon.  I won't bore you with all those pictures though.

After a dinner from Little Caesars, we decorated sugar cookies.  I know, it wasn't specifically mentioned by John Adams, but the last cookie decorating holiday was Easter and there isn't another one until Halloween.  We definitely needed another cookie holiday to tide us over.  So, I went online and found some holiday appropriate cookie cutters.  As usual, they were very tasty.

These two pictures were taken by Nathaniel with his "new" camera.

Don't they look super patriotically tasty?

We, of course, did take up John Adams on his "illuminations" suggestion.  We got lots of fireworks to enjoy.  So did many of our neighbors and there were several aerial fireworks going off around us.  We tried some different kinds this year.  We got some little tanks and also some parachute guys.  Unfortunately, we were either terrible at finding them or only two or three of them actually had parachute guys in them.  I honestly think it was the latter.

It was fun taking pictures of the fireworks with my new camera.  I'm still getting used to it, and I'm not used to taking pictures of fireworks at all, so I'll have to practice again on the 24th.  We're also going to have to go somewhere else to buy our fireworks too.  We bough this huge box thinking that it was an aerial firework.  Turns out we were wrong.  On top of that, the fuse was weird and broke off, or something, and when it started it went for like ten seconds and stopped.  No way was that it, the box was huge!  We just waited and about 10-15 seconds later it started up again.  It went for a while but nothing ever shot in the air.  We were so disappointed.

When it finished, we noticed the bottom of the box was glowing.  We didn't dare approach it because it had stopped before and started again.  We wanted to make sure all the fireworks were spent.  Before long it was completely engulfed in flames.  It really made Nathaniel nervous and he ran inside.  It was in the middle of the road, so I wasn't worried.  Jaaromy went and got a bowl of water to put it out with.  Very exciting!  The thought had crossed my mind to bring our hose out front and hook it up.  I didn't listen though.  It worked out, but had I listened, it might have been easier.  On the plus side, we got our bonfire as recommended by John Adams.

Later that night, I tried out my new camera on the moon.  It was kind of golden from all the wildfires going on.  With the telephoto lens it zooms in exactly as far as my old camera, but it's still a lot more pixels.  Plus, the atmosphere was a little smoky.  But I think it still looks cool.

I love all the things we do to celebrate Independence Day.  Maybe next year we'll have to add a few more.  Maybe some guns...