It started with housecleaning, since we were hosting a party at our place. We managed to finish up in time to go to the Pet Parade, which is always fun (though, as someone was telling me later, is just crazy with too many people compared to four years ago). The highlight of the Parade worth blogging about was the flying dog. Someone had harnessed up a little rat dog of some kind to a bunch of big helium balloons, and had it tethered on a leash at about four feet in the air. My thought was, if they drop the leash, the dog is gone—I hope they have a pellet gun!

For the balloons. The balloons. Yeah, I know what you thought I meant the gun was for.

Oh, we saw Shannon in the Parade, as well. And apparently Chris was in it too. A fake monkey? What?

We fought our way to Drake Park where my wife was looking for toe rings and I bought the kids each a beanbag snake. This was the “old fashioned celebration” part of the public festivities they were advertising, I guess—craft vendors and food, though we didn’t make it as far as the food.

The party at our house was pretty good. We had my family, old family friends, Shannon and Simone for a little while, a friend of my wife’s and even some of my coworkers. The best part of course was the fireworks, especially for the kids. I set off a lot of them, and we were treated to just as many (legal and otherwise) from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

And this was the first year we let the kids stay up until 10 to watch the Pilot Butte fireworks show (which according to the news this evening is the largest in Oregon. Who knew!). We have a nice view of Pilot Butte from our yard, so it was a treat.

The only downside was going back to work the next day (today)… unpleasant. Maybe I’ll start taking July 5th off from now on…