What a Fantastic Fourth!!!!

This has to be one of the best Fourth of July holidays I've had in quite a long time. We started the festivities off by watching the space shuttle launch and it was kind of a funny coincidence that I witnessed the first ever launch of a space shuttle (Challenger) in 8th grade from of all places, Thief River Falls and here I was again witnessing the first ever "Fourth of July launch" right here in TRF again. Come to think of it, the boys also watched their first ever live shuttle launch also in TRF.

We got together with the Widerskis bringing out all the fixins for a nice cookout including hamburgers and pork loins with hickory chips and finished it off with fresh watermelon (from Texas), chocolate chip bars and fruit Jello. Before the cookout, I stopped by the Murphy's gazebo and Fern Williams was out there with Wanda Murphy, Mrs. Folger, and one other lady I didn't recognize and I said, "So here's where the lady's auxiliary is meeting..." :o) I wanted to check on Ken as he had his knee replacement done on the left side last week and has been out of the hospital just recently and apparently has already been walking the sidewalk on the new knee. I guess last night was pretty tough with the pain and all, but he's managing pretty well.

We set off a slew of fireworks out front of the Widerski house and in the middle of the show, Wanda Murphy walked over and presented half of a birthday cake to share with the kids. Speaking of kids, there were quite a few taking in the fireworks. There was Daniel and Aaron, Drew, Tyler, Johnnie, Austin, Kaylynn, and Kaylynn/Austin's sister, and two other neighbor kids I didn't get the names of. There were at least two elderly couples that rode by on old-fashioned one-speed bikes with those big whitewall tires and waved as they went by watching the display. It was small town Americana at its finest. And not a single siren could be heard all evening. Of course they don't have any bottle rockets, so probably no house fires.

It's now 10:30 and I just returned home, so we were gone a good four hours with all the festivities and I'm truly beat. What a day... Thank goodness we don't have baseball at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Then again, I do have to get up and go to the arena to sign the boys up for their semi-pro baseball field trip in Fargo or they'll miss out on that. Sounds like we weren't the only ones who had a nice holiday today given the e-mails I've gotten today. I'm glad everyone else had a great time too. Now back to the daily grind until Labor Day... :o)