Happy Independence Day!

[Ghoulish Delight]

We had fun. Decided, for the first time in the 5 years we've lived in Irvine, to check out the big fireworks show at Heritage Park. You could pay to get into the high school stadium itself, or just hang out in the park. We chose to hang out in the park. Strapped our new backpack chairs on, and made the 15 minute walk at about 6:00 with dinner in the pouches. The park was hopping, but not packed. We instantly found a shady spot by the big pond to eat and lay out for a while.

By 7:30 we were in the mood to stretch our legs, so we packed up the chairs (so fast and easy, freaking LOVE those chairs) and wandered. We decided to see what we could see of the goings on inside the stadium, which started at 3 in the afternoon. Turns out to be a good thing we didn't pay to get in as mostly it appeared to be a way to pen your children up for 7 hours and have them be happy about it. Which is awesome if you're a family with kids. Several hours where they can run around, listen to the family freindly band playing "Celebrate". But not exactly made for a couple of DINKs like us.

But, we did notice that we seemed to have stumbled across the right spot to watch the fireworks. Our best clue being the tarp people. As a general rule, when in a crowd situation...follow the people with the tarp(s). We sat ourselves down right behind a family that was prepared enough to have attached tarps to the fence in front of them to block out the sun that would otherwise been in their eyes. Clearly been doing this for a while, clearly knew where the good view was. And here we were an hour before the show, no problem getting a good view, despite the thousands of people there. It's a freaking huge park.

The fireworks show was great. Not Disney, of course, but on occasions it's nice to see a smaller show like this. Without the sky-high budget of Disney, they have to get creative in their spending, and therefore creative in the use of what they've got. And this was a darn good show. They had low level stuff launching from the end of the football field (including a very impressive salute to the armed forces that consisted of about 5 minutes of constant, loud, bright small shells of blue, red, white, and green to represent the Aiforce, Marines, Navy, and Army respectively). The big aerial stuff launched from behind the stadium. We had a really good view of those, save for a bit o'blockage from one tree (lesson learned). But it was a great display, lots of big shells, some pretty cool creative shells as well.

Then there was the finale. First was the obligatory dumping of a billiions shells of every shape size and color. That was awesome. Then that ended with a barrage of about a dozen of what amoutned to precussion grenades launched skyward. One bright flash, and then a loud bang. That was cool. That ended, the crowd cheered, but those that have been around long enough were saying 'hold your positions'. They knew something was coming. Then, just as the echo of the pre-finale made it's way back to us (which, being about 15 seconds later, was pretty cool), out comes a hail of bigger, brighter, louder blasts...with sparkly. Nice. Then the lights came on...only to see another volley of colorful fireworks shoot off.

So then we joined the mass of humanity funneling out, and were back home within 20 minutes. And of course Munchkin, who I was worried about all night, appeared entirely unphased by it all, as always.

Sigh, why must we find the cool things to do around here when we're planning on moving within a month or 2?