Celebrating our independence

Our holiday weekend was fabulous and full of fun.

I'm going to divide our Independence Day weekend into a few different blog entries because that's the only way I can even think of writing about it all.

Let's start with Friday July 3, 2009.

Bare with me, this is a long one.

The weather was gorgeous on Friday, as it was all weekend.

Some of us ladies spent the morning at the Mandan Art-in-the-Park. Exactly 27 years ago my mom was selling her artwork at this fair. She was 9-months pregnant with me (and about to pop). It's neat to visit the fair with her all these years later. We go most every year. I guess you could say it's a family tradition.

Corey, my dad, and Grandma Katy spent the afternoon golfing.

In the evening, we all joined at the river cabin for a birthday celebration and dinner. Uncle Bob made his signature ribs - they are my favorite!


My grandparents graciously hosted us again. They are just too darn cute, and so in love.

This is a random out-house. There are lots of random out-houses round these parts.

Ah. Fireworks. Buying fireworks in North Dakota is an interesting experience. It's as different as possible from firework stands where I grew up in California. In North Dakota fireworks are sold in circus tents.

They sell it all. Snakes, sparklers, bottle rockets and everything in between ... and these Big Fat Ass Shells. Wow.

This Big One was over $100. (we didn't buy it).

Check out the Instigator. It's a steal at $219. (we didn't buy this one either).

Surprising to me, my little cousin Parker loves fireworks.

If he heard us shooting them of he'd jump up and down and run outside. I've never seen him so excited. It definitely made it more fun to have an audience.

The smoke bombs came in handy for getting rid of the mosquitos.

The boys got creative with their firework lighting. These firecrackers were a few years old and weren't lighting very well, so we put some paper in the can, lit it and then dropped the firecrackers in. Notice the blow torch? I thought it was overkill but as it turns out, it worked great.

After they all had exploded (or so we thought), grandpa poured the ashes into the fire pit. For the next hour we heard random explosions coming from the fire pit. It kept everyone away from the fire for a while. We thought each bang was the last, but they kept on popping for quite a while. It sure was funny.

For a change of pace, we lit a few parachutes. What's more fun than running around catching the falling objects out of the sky?!

When we were ready for more action, we tried some spinning flowers.

After a few sets, we discovered that the spinning flowers were a multi pack - some spin and change color, some spin and then shoot up into the air, and some spin and then explode. As you can imagine the surprise explosion was interesting (and quite dangerous). After the first scare, we decided that hiding behind a tree was a good idea.

Corey found out what happens when an explosive spinning flower is put inside a soda can. Definitely explains the reason these shouldn't be held in your hand. yikes.

... one of my favorites. So tiny but such fun.

Some sort of fountain. It's pretty ... but definitely not as exciting as the exploding and spinning flowers.

oooh. ahh.

And of course, there were bottle rockets.

It's the last year of bottle rockets for North Dakota so we made sure we got our fair share.

My grandmas. (part of our audience)

After the fireworks, we played with a light-up Frisbee. It's one of our favorite yard toys. My mom looks creepy and ghostly - sorry about that mom.

The famous exploding camp fire (after the random explosions stopped).

It was difficult to imagine that it was only July 3. Another day of fun was still ahead.