The "Less than Mediocre" Show

July - it means two things - 4th of July and Fireworks.

It's hard to live up to Uncle Bubby's "Big Show."  Especially when you factor in the price of fireworks now-a-days.  Since when does a box of sparklers cost $6????  We put together a measly amount and then split it into 2 groups so that we could do fireworks for the 4th and 24th (Pioneer Day in Utah).  

Luckily for us, a very generous neighbor invited us over to join his family party for the 4th and he had spent a ton of money on fireworks - he had all the good ones, even the aerials and it was great!  We added our small, insignificant 1st group to his pile and felt like we maybe paid for the time spent sitting on his grass - maybe.  But we had a good time and are so grateful for their generosity in inviting us.

The 24th wasn't as spectacular.  We pulled out our 2nd group of fireworks and decided to just do them on our own.  Tate had to come home early during the neighbor's show because he was scared, so we decided to keep it low key so that he wouldn't be too afraid.

We started off with some sparklers (some of those $6 a box ones) and the kids loved them.  Zach is getting more and more brave and at some points actually scared us.  But we all survived and no lawn was damaged in the filming of these pictures!  :)

Hailey was all about the poses - she was quite the model when I was taking pictures.  

Tate wasn't quite sure about the fireworks at first, but after the first few, thought they were pretty fun.  

You'll notice all my kids are in the pj's.  We decided to bath and get all ready for bed so that we didn't have to do it so late after our fireworks were done.

Once we exhausted the sparklers, which took all of about 5 minutes, we moved on to the big ones.  Well, bigger than sparklers anyway.

It was almost comical lighting them and realizing how much they paled in comparison to the expensive, fancy ones we saw not two week earlier.

But the kids were still excited and loved them - they especially liked taking turns picking out the next one to do.

And bless their hearts, they were glued to the few we had to light.

Yes, the "less than mediocre" show lasted less than 15 minutes and most of that time was spent trying to take the paper off the fireworks to light.  But we still had fun and Tate managed to stay outside during the entire time, which for us was a success.  Guess I might want to start saving now for next year's fireworks so that we can at least move up the review to "mediocre."