And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

The Independence Day celebrations of my youth started early in the morning with a church pancake dinner, followed by either watching or being in, a parade, followed by games, festivals, movies, and barbecues until it was dark and we could set off fireworks (which was always wonderful) followed by camping out in a grassy area and waiting until eleven when the giant firework display lit up the whole sky and each burst seemed so close you thought it would land on you when it rained down out of the sky. That is how I thought the Fourth of July was celebrated everywhere.

Well, that's not how it's celebrated here in Sunland. Our church didn't have a breakfast, there was no parade, fireworks in any form are not sold here, and each city does its own, very small, firework display at nine, but traffic is so bad you'll be stuck in it until midnight.

So, for the first time last week and this week, I felt myself getting just a little bit homesick. Maybe from now on we'll just have to make a yearly pilgrimage to Hometown just for Independence Day. But this year that was not an option. So I came up with other plans: Ultimate Frisbee in the park!
I was worried that since we couldn't reserve the park, pavilion, or field, we wouldn't get tables and we would have to fight to play Frisbee. I arrived at the park at nine in the morning (an hour early) and discovered that a game of soccer had already taken up the entire field, and that another family had already claimed the pavilion. I snagged two tables in a grassy area and waited. An hour later, people actually started arriving, the soccer game was over and the other family that had claimed the pavilion asked if they could play Frisbee with us!

It went great! We had a lot of people there, both kids and adults, and the kids had a great time playing on the playground, digging in the sand (we brought a lot of sandtoys) and running around on the grass. Everyone brought food, so there was more than enough to eat. I made this:

 And Amy brought these:

So not only was there more than enough delicious food, some of it was even patriotic! And then, of course, we played Ultimate: 

See how nice and cool we all look? It was sixty seven all day. Mostly cloudy with a nice, cool breeze. Not exactly beach weather, but perfect Ultimate Frisbee weather! 

The party ended at two so everyone could go off and do their own activities, but to my delight, I was not the only one who decided the fireworks were just not worth keeping kids up late or driving anywhere for. After discovering that most of us didn't have plans, we quickly decided to have a game night! We were up until Midnight playing.

Maybe it wasn't the best Independence Day ever, but it was a wonderful Holiday.