4th of July

The second long day of this crazy weekend was 4th of July. Every year Dan's family and extended family and friends park vehicles (the night before even!) all along the Stonebank parade route. You would think this was as big of an event as La Crosse's Oktoberfest, but instead we are out there at 9 in the morning for a parade consisting mostly of fire trucks and old cars, that starts at 11 and lasts about an hour. I'm pretty sure the population of this little town quadruples in size on this day. As we do just about every year following the parade, we went over to the park for more beer, some music and, of course, corn on the cob to support the local Lions. And then finally we head over to Ted and Marcia's for a dip in the pool and dinner.

Our crew


Just about all of our cars fit in this picture



Taking bloody mary orders



Resting in the shade...it was a HOT one!

Somehow this seems backwards...I think I should be sitting and he should be pushing

You may have to brace yourselves for the excitement of this next picture. Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents bought us a box of fireworks that you light off at home. There were always sparklers, of course, and some of the cones that spray different colors a couple feet in the air and always a few duds too. Since moving to the Milwaukee area, each year Dan and I have bought one of these cheap $10 boxes of fireworks and lit them off at the end of the day. This year we hadn't really seen them at Pick 'N Save or anywhere else in the weeks leading up to the 4th. Since my parents were in town and because Rylie's a little too young for the real thing, we thought it would be fun to light some off with them. We ran out to Wal-mart on Saturday night after Rylie's party to see if we could find anything. As luck would have it Wal-mart still had quite a few boxes, so we grabbed a couple. Dan opened one up the night of the fourth and found that they really weren't fireworks at all. There were about 10 of these tubes things and they, upon twisting the bottom, shoot out confetti (see picture below). They also contained something resembling a roman candle, which instead was also a tube full of confetti. While the boxes had TNT and Danger warnings written all over them, the only thing you could actually light in there were the sparklers. We were quite disappointed and Dan even went back to Wal-mart that night to return the other box. Needless to say, the 5 second sparklers that the box contained were the big show this year.