4th of July Party at da House

The Trent Leavitt Family with the Happiest Kid on the Planet










Happy Birthday America - 233 years young

I can only remember 3 previous 4th of July's: In 1970 I was 9 years old we had a block party on our street in Sunnyvale, California. Do they even have those anymore?

At that time, the United States was still deeply involved in the Vietnam war and patriotism was running very high. The Blue Angels from Moffat Field would often fly overhead and did so on the 4th - they buzzed the houses and I could easily make out the tail insignias as I looked skyward. I'm sure lawyers put a stop to that many years ago. Back then, the street was blocked off with barricades, we had a parade, there was a huge BBQ, and plenty of adult beverages for the grownups - after all the '70's were just getting started.

My next memory of this date is from 1976 when the United States celebrated 200 years of revolt...er...freedom from Great Britain. My aunt Mary and uncle Jon visited from western Pennsylvania - they asked if we owned the pool house too. At that time our golden retriever was named Sundance but uncle Jon, God bless him, kept calling him Sundane - too many pabst blue ribbons or too much time in the coal mine? Jon and his family were and still remain, the hardest working people I have ever met in my life. Jon and his boys would work in the coal mine and while on paid vacation, they would drive tour buses. I don't think they ever took a real vacation.

Memory #3 is from 2 years ago. At that time Alec was in Peru. This year, alas, Jake is in Ecuador, and Alec is in Yellowstone with his wife and her family. Not to worry though, my wife has PLENTY of family to fill up the yard and empty the soft ice cream machine - twice.

All other 4th's just seem to fade in and out. I was reminded tonight of the time Wade nearly burned his house down one year and Carolyn cursed him like a sailor. She's got spunk.

My job the past few days has been to put stuff together. Chairs, tables, mist machine and so forth. Thankfully most of this stuff didn't have too many parts and I didn't have any spare ones leftover once I thought I was done. This is a good thing since the last thing I put together had more parts that the space shuttle and I had PLENTY of nuts and bolts and doohickeys left over. And I swear I tried to follow the directions....Finally I just had to scratch my head and throw the parts out before my wife could see them and make the universal wife comment,

"Don't you need to use ALL of those?" ....as sweat poured off my face in the 108 degree heat.

Those parts are at the bottom of some landfill 40 miles from my house.





Anyway, another 4th is in the books - I counted 35 people but I'm sure I missed a few folks. We had a great time.

The legal fireworks were ho-hum but the little ones liked them. I had some illegal fireworks purchased at the Indian reservation a while back. I knew they were good since upon firing them off on the beach 2 years ago they managed to summon the Oceanside, California police department and the marines at Camp Pendelton thought the west coast was under attack. I don't think we caused any alarm tonight since Chase and Beeb's only lit 2, but their superiority was easily evident. I'm going back on the reservation to get the good stuff.





And we had no need to worry about fire safety since firefighter (don't you think this sounds much more menacing than just fireman?) Kip was here with his family. We were in good hands although I hope the Rose's paint job rubs out. I mentioned to everyone that their verbal acknowledgment of the damage and injury waiver was just as tight as a written one. See photo below.... Big Air Chase off the superstructure.





The cat wasn't too thrilled with all the people