'Merica

Happy Freedom Day, 'Merica!!!

The Houghs.  Ready to celebrate freedom.

The day after we flew in from Florida, we had to turn an abrupt about-face and throw on our festivity pants for the Fourth of July.  Not ideal after a cross-country vacation, mind you, but we are Americans after all, and that's what you do on Independence Day.  You wear festive clothes, drink some beer, and blow some shit up.

We spent the better part of our July 4th morning unpacking our suitcases, doing laundry, picking up Watson from my folks' house in Clare, and otherwise settling back into normalcy.  This brief respite was short-lived, as our circle of friends were having a taco party over at Mitch and Kelli's house in the afternoon.  Everybody brought a few items to throw in on, and we all gorged ourselves past the tipping point on awesome Mexican food.  I will not envy everyone's toilets tomorrow morning.

Anyway, after hanging out over there for a few hours, stuffing our faces and having some drinks, we caravanned over to the Midland Country Club Golf Course to watch the city's annual firework show.  Doing it this way was by far a better way of doing than we had previously done in 2016, where we sat on a grassy hillside next to the courthouse downtown for HOURS in order to nab a decent seat.

All in all, a pretty chill Fourth, which we enjoyed thoroughly after our week of craziness in the tropics.

Enjoy.

Breaking in one of my new koozies from Universal Studios:  Duff Man.

Even my domestic brand was feeling all patriotic today.  I was totally down with this.

Brad prepares to blow a bunch of shit up to celebrate our nation's independence. . .

I helped him light off a few of these mortars in the street, and in the process suffered some pretty bad burns on my hand.  Brad is a cigar salesman, and gave me a fancy tube-shaped cigar lighter to use to ignite the mortars.  Unfortunately for Yours Truly, I had never used one of these fancy-pants lighters before, and couldn't tell which side was the side the fire came out of, so when I flipped the switch a high blue flame scorched my palm and fingers.  Hurt like a son of a bitch.

FOR FREEDOM

An attempt at getting a picture of all our kids together in a picture, dolled up in all of their Fourth of July threads. . .

. . . aaaaand this is more like it.

The Shepherds make a brief appearance (they had been entertaining relatives all afternoon, around the corner from Mitch's house.)  We'd end up seeing the fireworks with them later.

Abby and Jackson.  Partners in crime.

We all parked along St. Andrews and walked onto the Country Club golf course, getting our plebeian stink all over those snooty rich folks' greens.  There was a lot of traffic heading into this area - though, surprisingly, not on the golf course itself, which was nice - and in the process we lost the Larsons and Bardens.  So it was just the Houghs, Johnsons, Fischers, Shepherds, and Bosses together for the firework show.

 Everything's a competition with these fourth graders. . .

Alayna will have no part in a footrace, just like her old man.  We met up with the other four families on a hill overlooking the course, with a great view of the firework show.  I took no pictures or videos this year, just as in the previous few years - I'm sure if you were really desperate you could find a couple snazzy Youtube videos of fireworks, but I've reached that age where I'd much rather just appreciate what's in front of me.  Happy Fourth, 'Merica.

- Brian