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Bombs Bursting In The Air…

Wifey™ and I got up early on the Fourth of July in order to begin the process of preparing food for our guests who would be arriving later in the day. Fireworks typically begin at 9:30, and we usually head down to the lagoon area around 7 to pick out a good spot. Most spots are already filled by people who spent the day at the park, BBQ’ing and picnicing. It’s a nice area filled with parades, festivals and live music.

However, our yearly tradition is to just leave the door open for whomever wants to stop by. I’d marinated most of the meats the day before and the chicken could be cooked ahead of time and served room temperature. The boneless ribs were slow cooked in a marinade mixture for about four hours prior to the guests arriving, making them extremely tender. I’ll have to do that again. Hamburgers were the only thing I really had to cook up as guests arrived. They also came out really good, since I’d added the marinade to the meat the day prior, along with a couple of eggs, bread crumbs and onions to the mixture.

The morning was filled with cooking some of the “extras” like pasta salad, cupcakes and other goodies. And then it was pretty much just waiting around for people to arrive.

Our first guests arrived around 1:30, and the next about an hour later. Gave us time to relax and chat with everyone and mostly take it easy. We ate, we drank and then around 7PM we all walked down to the lagoon to wait for the featured attraction to begin. While waiting we played the game Taboo, which was entertaining.

And then the fireworks began. About twenty minutes to half an hour of colorful lights and loud bangs going off and then a mad dash to get up and out of the park as hundreds flee’d the park in a mass exodus. The nice thing about living within walking distance is that there’s no drive home, and no traffic line.

Typically, after the fireworks display is over, cars are lined up for an hour or two as they all try to leave the town. It’s a small town, so clogging up the streets doesn’t take much and since we’re surrounded by a lagoon, there are only a couple of exits. It’s a traffic nightmare and, honestly, if I didn’t live there I’d probably avoid the whole thing. But since I do live there, I’m home within a few minutes.

And then my guests get to try and figure out how to make their own way home.

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