Firey beginning and end to July 4th

sparks & pops from fireworks
Originally uploaded by MDH, II.

Well, the rain in the morning and early afternoon held a cloud of doubt whether there would be fireworks, but the sun and clear night prevailed -- explosions everyone!

Thomas, Lois, and Marcus were at the Freygangs for the 4th. Lois and Diane were downstairs sewing, which left Father and Marc to sit around and talk. Finally, Diane came up and asked that Father make the pork ribs (pre-cooked). Lois doesn't like her ribs sloppy and gooey like most people, so Father was light on the sauce. Marcus ate fish (shrimp) as other meat is unapealing to him (smell).

One of the Freygangs cooked a communal dessert -- a pizza pan size cookie with super sweet frosting and fruit topping. Later, everyone got more sugar with ice cream.

The girls were happy about firing rockets and fireworks; no longer relegated to spectators alone. Despite her best efforts, Jennifer couldn't light a pair of rockets to fire similtaneously.

Father bought a fair amount of fireworks. The girls like the parachute type, but many failed to eject from their rocket and plummeted to the rocket cooking the chute. Angel tried to get into the mix of things by having her face right in the fireworks. She also rolled in the blackened grass, for dog reasons humans cannot fathom.

The girls disliked the Roman candles as they were limited in number of shells and the speed at which they fired. Marcus tried to speed up things by lighting a series, but each burst blew out the lighter he was using to light the others. Typical of Marcus -- a couple tipped over sending pellets horizontally through the grass. No one was hurt.

For a finale', the girls like the mortar shells. We tried to get three to fire at once, but that never happened. Jenny was able to ignite me with firey debris and Jessica's oddly exploded in the firing tube rather than launch out then explode.

Neighbors all around had thunderous quake fireworks sounding more like artillery and cluster bombs than real fireworks. Others still, had neat low trajectory shells that lit up nicely.

-- Sad to say that Lois got ill early Wednesday morning and puked the ice cream she had, as well as most of dinner. Not the fireworks and explosives we sought.