Our family this year celebrated the recent July 4 holiday in a lot bigger way than we have in many years.
We had the celebration on the holiday itself while some others in our neighborhood did it either on Saturday or Sunday of that weekend.
It had been more than 10 years since we celebrated to the extent we did this year.
In years past, we started in mid to late afternoon and didn’t finish setting off fireworks until 10 or 10:30 that night.
Pat and I had been talking about doing that again this year and a couple of weeks beforehand she told our daughter Meghan about it and asked her.
She and her husband Terry were all for it (so was grandson Liam, he just didn’t know) and she got in touch with her cousin, who is the oldest daughter of my sister Maureen and her husband Randy and they were excited about it as well.
Soon we had Pat and I, Meghan, Terry and little Liam, my sister and her husband, their oldest daughter Kara and her husband CJ and their son Wayland. Maureen and Randy’s youngest daughter Kara couldn’t make it.
Also, Pat’s 96-year-old mom was coming, as well.
Pat and Meghan took care of all the planning. I just helped, though that ended up being about three days of helping.
In the days leading up to it, Pat arranged to purchase some fireworks that at the same time benefitted some athletic team or teams.
We decided to stay traditional with the food we were going to cook. What is better than grilled hamburgers and hot dogs on July 4.
We had all kinds of sides, fresh corn on the cob, Pat’s pasta salad, baked beans, potato salad, chips, and more. Meghan made and brought what is called a Charcuterie platter and we all snacked on it.
Though we had it at our house, and were using our grill, Meghan decided she wanted to cook the burgers and different kinds of hotdogs.
She had a little help from Terry and they were delicious.
Our golf cart was a big hit to Liam, almost 4, and his cousin Wayland, 6. This was the first year Liam was old enough to enjoy the fireworks but he had a blast.
Terry helped him with a Sparkler or two and he was busy taking the fireworks to his dad, Wayland’s dad and my brother-in-law Randy who were shooting them off.
It was 10:30 before we were finished with the fireworks. All of us enjoyed watching those. Then it was time to cleanup.
As I mentioned, we hadn’t done this for a long time. It was good to be together and celebrate like we used to do.
We hope to do it again next year.