5th Annual Fourth of July Fireworks Extravaganza

It rained and it rained! Bless all the people who still came out to the Extravaganza in the rain. But you know what?? We all had a great time. The kids loved it. And God stopped the rain for a short time so Eric could do his show!! It was amazing. I'll try to get around to posting some videos of it soon. (Check my youtube sidebar every now and then, and eventually they'll be posted if you want to see them.) You know what's funny? The forecast said it was gonna rain all day and actually start thunderstorming at 6:00 pm. Never once did we hear thunder or see lightning, and then it let up exactly before dusk. I still can't get over it. Oh, and it started raining again less than five minutes after Eric finished his show.

3rd of July

Here's the kids doing sparklers. Makenna tried one and then decided that it wasn't very cool. In fact, it was so not cool taht she went all the way down by the woods and hid behind a tree for a while. (See the little shoes?) Then Eric put on a tiny show for us.

See the tiny white feet way out there behind the tree?

Fourth of October

Well, I'm sure that most of you remember that Eric couldn't complete his Fourth of July Extravaganza this year due to a very kind neighbor who decided it would be fun to ruin the fun of everyone and call the cops to put a halt on his fireworks. Eric, being bummed, mentioned this to a couple of his firework buddies. Being pyros themselves and always looking for a oppurtunity to blow things up, they planned a Midwest Firework Extravaganza out in Indiana where thankfully it is legal to shoot off fireworks, so cops were no concern this time. Eric's been looking forward to this for weeks, so have the kids.
Eric packed out the van with ALL of his left over fireworks. (There's a picture of how full the van was.), picked up his newly discovered pyro buddy that goes to our church, and started the hour trek over to Indiana. I met up with Ron's wife a little later and she followed me over there. Between the two of us, we have 10 kids, so talk about a little crazy. It was about an hour drive. Makenna decided that it would be fun to cry for the last 20 minutes of that drive. Try mixing that with driving in very unfamiliar territory and not wanting to get lost along and making sure I didn't lose Wendy. I was a slightly frazzled by the time I arrived. I'm sure you know how that goes.
Once we got there and everyone was out of the car all was well. Eric and Ron came over and set the kids up with their fishing poles and helped them fish for awhile. Blake caught two fish, and Luke caught one. Poor Jakeb and Kaleb never really got a chance to fish because Daddy decided to go back over to the fireworks and expected Mommy to hook the worm. No way that was gonna happen. The dock was pretty small too, and squeezing 10 kids and at least two adults on it was just not happening, so we stopped fishing pretty early. (Let's just say that Wendy and I were VERY relieved.)
We let the kids play around for awhile out. The kids play SOOOO well together. They are pretty much the same ages so it's very nice. The hosts gave the kids some goodies, and, boy, were they thrilled. These hosts were AWESOME. They deep fried some chicken, and wow...talk about YUM! Did I mention after the goodies for the kids, they also had a pinata! They went all out and filled the pinata to the brim. All the kids got plenty.
FINALLY, it was firework time. I promise you that we had to be watching fireworks for at least a whole hour, if not longer. There is a picture below of the fireworks on the ground during the daylight, but that wasn't even 1/2 of them. There were probably about 6-7 guys that brought tons of stuff. They were like little kids in a candy store. Their excitement was plastered all across their faces. You should have seen them. They did a great job with the fireworks. They were phenomenal. I actually heard one of the little boys say, "This is the best day of my entire life." Seriously, fishing, candy, food,and fireworks......it's every boy's dream...big or small!

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July greeted us with thoughts of rain. Eric spent all morning long getting ready for the fireworks. We didn't have a huge turnout for the Extravaganza this year, but it was still great. Eric did a great job. Here's Eric and Kent getting ready for the big show. They even recruited the boy to help. They had Blake and Luke unwrapping some stuff.







Here's Kent and Eric after it's all over!

Prelude to the Extravaganza

We had a prelude to the Fireworks Extravaganza this year. We invited some people over and played cornhole and cooked out and then had some fireworks. Eric would say that it was nothing to extravagant, but just some "testers." I hope everyone had a good time. I know I did. Click here for a teaser of the show.

Fireworks

Just a couple more days until the Firework Extravaganza! Eric's already started setting up.

Less than a month left!

And I'm not talking about the baby. This post is more for Eric than for me. I actually mean to post it yesterday. It's less than a month until the big bad Fireworks Extravaganza!!!!!! The countdown has officially begun even though Eric's has been counting down since January. It's going to be held on July fourth this year instead of the third. I think I already told you all that he had 17 cases of fireworks. He has taken some of them out of the cases and put them in other boxes to see all that he has. It's a little overwhelming when you see it all. There's even a pile that I didn't even take pictures of. Talk about CRAZY!!!! Check it out.

Fireworks just for KIDS

So this is what we did tonight. After eating, we went outside where the boys could play with some fireworks....those little pyro's. I swear one of these days my house is going to be burnt down by fireworks. They are all so obsessed, but they sure do have fun. First we pulled out the little poppers that you just throw to the ground and they make the popping sound. (I used to love those as a kid.) Afterwards, Eric pulled out some sparklers. The kids really did enjoy those. They haven't done those since last summer. As you can see in some of the pictures we had a little fire episode where we actually had to get the hose. (We haven't had to do that for a couple of years.) A sparkler decided to malfunction, and Eric decided to re-light it anyway and throw it in the trash can where it didn't go out like we all thought it would. Oh, and once Kaleb started to chase Eric with a sparkler. You should have seen Eric run. It was great.

Picnic, Fireworks, and Racing

It was a beautiful day outside. The boys wanted to go outside and play with their pretend food. I suggested taking a blanket, so they could all sit and have a picnic. I even supplied paper plates, forks, and some real fruit snacks for them. This lasted for all of about 15 minutes, then it was off to play other things until...... ...their daddy got home, and then of course the fireworks came out to play. They all love to watch those things. (One of these days our neighbors are going to get sick of us.) They were very into the smoke ones with all the colors, naming the colors as we went. Eric also sent some spinners up in the air too. Those were my favorites. At one point, we had a flyaway and it went directly toward Eric. You should have seen the Indian Rain Dance that he did. It was great! Of course, it never fails. I always miss the opportunity to embarrass him by not catching it on film! Then it was off to dinner, only to go back outside after dinner, for a Alma Marathon!! The boys started racing each other. Blake won twice, and Luke won once. The other boys were just in it for fun. Kaleb especially loved to hear, "On your mark, get set, GO!!!!!!"