Saturday, July 9, 2011

Independence Day Weekend

We started our Independence Day celebrations on the 3rd. We discovered last year that a church near us has a patriotic concert and then fireworks - not on the 4th. So we decided to go enjoy that again this year. My mom and dad were spending the night at our house, so they were able to join us. The concert by The Georgia Symphony was wonderful! And then we went back to our car to pull out the chairs to watch the fireworks show. However there was a different kind of fireworks show going on a little bit away - lightning! So no sooner had we gotten the chairs out of the car, we put them back in the car and all piled in the van to watch the fireworks. They put on a nice display!Since the fireworks can be pretty loud, Heidi prefers to watch them with ear muffs on.Emma and I watched over the car for a little while.Not only was it a wonderful concert and a good fireworks show, but once we got out of the parking lot (about 25 minutes) it only took us 10 minutes to get home! :-)

My parents spent the night at our house so Jason and I could get up early and go run The Peachtree Road Race. For those who don't know, it's a 10K (6.2 mile) road race down Peachtree Street in Atlanta. It's been going on for 42 years now, I think. 60,000 people signed up to do it this year. It has become a tradition for us and whether we're in shape for it or not, we sign up and go do it. This year we were feeling in decent shape for it, however we had not been training in the heat. And BOY was it warm and humid that morning. We did it, but found it rather difficult. Here I am sporting the race shirt that everyone gets for finishing; and Rachel is wearing a "finishing" sticker that Jason picked up in the finish area. It's as big as she is!After some yummy bagels and a 2 hour nap (for me), we decided to go out for dinner and ponder what to do about fireworks. It was turning in to a rainy/stormy evening. We thought about going to another local fireworks show, but the weather just looked too wet. So we decided to come home and see what we could find on TV. Heidi was very interested in seeing more fireworks. We were able to see a downtown Atlanta display, A Capitol Fourth from DC, and a great show in NY! I think the mission of more fireworks was accomplished.