It's the 4th of July! Well, close enough.

I LOVE the 4th of July.  It ranks right up there with Christmas and Halloween for me.  Warm weather, BBQs, family, and fireworks!  Growing up, it was always so hard to wait for it to get dark to start blowing things up.  My brother and sister and I would be outside with the sparklers at 6 o'clock swearing it was gonna get dark any second.  Before kids started blowing off their hands and ruining it for the rest of us, we'd light of our bag of fireworks in front of the house.  Neighbors would come out and watch and light their own as well.  A whole street full of roman candles was always quite a sight. 

It has been a standing tradition for me to go see the fireworks with my dad.  In fact, I think I still have the blanket in my trunk that would only be used once a year for watching fireworks.  My dad and I (and eventually Evan) always watched the Northglenn fireworks show.  It was close by and we had a system nailed down. We would park in the RTD parking lot on the other side of the highway and then walk over to EB Rains Park, blanket in hand.  We would wind our way through the crowd and always find a good spot by the lake with a pretty close view of the fireworks. 

Northglenn always, always, always shoots off their fireworks late.  For some reason they insist on waiting until Westminster and Thornton (who's shows you can see from afar) finish their shows before starting their own - even though they were always scheduled for 9pm.  Anyway, we'd watch the fireworks gleefully anticipating the grand finale and when it was all over we'd say how great it was and how they started late, but finished strong and walk back to the car.

Needless to say, this year I won't be able to participate in this tradition.  So I went looking for fireworks shows around the valley.  Burbank is having a show at their Starlight Bowl where a concert will be taking place before hand.  And in typical California fashion, it costs money to see the concert and to park, of course.  In fact, nearly all the fireworks shows charge admission!  Combine that with the nightmare of finding parking and fighting huge crowds, the 4th of July has lost its luster here in CA.  We might try to find a place to park and watch the fireworks from a distance, but because it's so hard to find free parking, we don't know how successful we will be.  I'm a little sad at the situation and wish I could be in CO right now, but luckily next weekend we are headed down to Sea World for our anniversary and they have a nightly fireworks show. 

I hope you all have a fun and safe Independence Day! Hooray for the USA!