Celebrating The 4th Early

Greg's been logging quite a few hours at work lately, and this week was no exception.  A commuting pilot husband has it rough when he's only got two days off and has to commute home and back to base during that time.  Two days quickly turns into one day off.  This weekend that translated to about 20 hours at home, less than one day.  Thumbs down.

When I realized Greg would only be home one night, I looked into 4th of July activities we could do on the one night he was home.  I discovered the US National Whitewater Center had fireworks last night (July 2nd), so we started making plans to go see them. 

Drafted to participate in the evening's festivities were our friends Sarah and Tim.

Before our fireworks excursion, we decided to meet for dinner at a place none of us have been to before, Icehouse, because they are dog friendly, and we wanted to bring Clyde.

He brought smiles to all that stopped by our table to see him, as usual.

Isn't he the cutest??  :)

I ordered a Thai Noodle Salad with chicken.

It had some heat in it!  Pretty tasty though!

Greg ordered a margherita pizza.  Shocking, considering my husband will order pizza on pretty much any menu!  It was your pretty standard pizza.

Sarah had the black bean veggie burger.  She said it was pretty good.

I actually loved their outdoor patio.  It's huge!

I don't think you can tell from this picture, but down at the other end of the patio there was a raging game of GIANT JENGA going.  It kind of cracked us all up!

Anyway, after our lovely outdoor dinner, we headed to the US National Whitewater Center for the fireworks.  I LOVE 4th of July fireworks, and was looking to another great display, like last year's.

We got to the Whitewater Center and it was apparent that we would not be the only ones checking out their festivities.  It was the most packed I've ever seen the parking lots there!

We found a good spot to watch from, set up our chairs, and the boys went to get beers.

Eventually the fireworks started and Clyde started to freak out a little, which was weird, since he did great at last year's display.  Greg and I finally decided it was the noise that was scaring him and covered him with a blanket to calm him down.  Poor pup!  After all that commotion, we finally looked up to watch and soon they were sending off some big ones one after another.  I kind of jokingly said outloud that maybe this was the finale, really thinking it was much too soon for it to be over, since they'd only been going about 10 minutes.  Well, I wish I was wrong, but I wasn't!  The entire "show" (if you could call it that) lasted around 10 minutes!  We were all kind of pissed, especially when it became apparent we were going to spend about 5 times as long as it did to watch the fireworks in the car trying to leave the Whitewater Center!

Oh well!  I did enjoy the company of my husband, dog, and friends, and we still had a good time despite being ripped off with the dinky fireworks display.  Hope you guys have better luck than I did finding a good display to watch this year!